Episode 62: Reframing Setbacks & Building Self-Worth Beyond the Gym
We’ve all experienced moments when progress stalls, motivation dips, or a workout just doesn’t go our way. In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I’m diving into the emotional and mental toll that setbacks in the gym can have—and how to turn them into powerful opportunities for growth.
We’ve all experienced moments when progress stalls, motivation dips, or a workout just doesn’t go our way. In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I’m diving into the emotional and mental toll that setbacks in the gym can have—and how to turn them into powerful opportunities for growth.
As a personal trainer and health coach, I’ve seen how easy it is to tie your self-worth to your physical performance. When things don’t go as planned, it can feel like a personal failure. But I’m here to remind you: it’s not. Setbacks are part of the process, and they can actually strengthen your mindset—if you approach them the right way.
In this episode, I cover:
Why gym setbacks can impact mental health more than we realize
How to separate your identity from your performance
The role of self-compassion in your fitness journey
Ways to develop a strong, well-rounded sense of self outside of the gym
How to find balance through hobbies, connection, and self-reflection
This conversation is for anyone who’s ever felt discouraged by a lack of progress or questioned their worth because of where they are in their fitness journey. If you’re looking to build a resilient mindset and redefine success on your own terms, you’ll want to give this one a listen.
🎧 Listen now on your favorite podcast platform or watch the full episode on YouTube!
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Jayd (00:00):
If you're coming to the gym with that attitude of how can I pick myself apart and beat the shit out of myself? You'll find something to do that with. But if you instead have a growth mindset of all of this is just facilitating my personal growth journey and setbacks in the gym should be handled exactly the same way that we should handle setbacks in real life, which is, okay, that didn't work. What can we learn from this? Or is there something to learn from this? Because it might just be I'm having a shitty day and it just didn't work. Get it next time.
(00:43)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer and health coach for over 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share with you some of the conversations and the tips that I share with my followers and personal training clients. In today's episode, I'm sharing a conversation that I had with my Twitch chat when I was live on my Twitch channel, that's Twitch tv slash Jaydigains. And in this conversation, one of my followers was telling me about a setback that he recently experienced while he was in the gym and he was having a really hard time coping mental health wise with that setback. Now, I think that this is a really common thing to happen for a lot of people, especially if you are the type of person who has a lot of high standards for yourself or if you tend to struggle with self worth.
(01:33)
So in this conversation I gave some tips for how to reframe the experience of setbacks in the gym so that it doesn't set back your mental health. If you struggle with self-worth or if you have a hard time not defining your self-worth by your performance in the gym or by your physique, then this episode is a great one to listen to. It's all about developing a stronger sense of self, a stronger connection with yourself, and learning to contextualize what we do in the gym in the grand scheme of things so that we don't experience setbacks as personal failures. And before we get into this episode, make sure to like this video if you're following along on YouTube, and make sure to also subscribe to my channel so you always get the latest videos. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure to follow the show so you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. And also, don't forget to give me a follow on Twitch if you're interested in joining me for my future livestream conversations. I go live on Tuesdays and several other days throughout the week in the fitness and health category where I do my workout and I offer fitness advice to my chatters and listeners, I hope to see you there. Just go to twitch.tv/Jaydigains and give me a follow or subscribe to support the channel. And without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:57)
So Thursday, it felt good, jumped on the planned one rep Max pr. From the next week to that session, you messaged the guy helping you programming and said, if you feel safe with the need, do it. You did it, but you're not happy with your depth on it. At the time, you thought it was okay, but now you're depressed because you thought it wasn't good and you've been down on yourself. Any advice, it doesn't matter. None of this shit fucking matters, dude. Sometimes you got to step back and stop taking yourself so seriously. Your value, your personal value has nothing to do with how heavy you squat or you know how perfect your squat is. You can't identify who you are as a person with your performance in the gym because guess what? We're all getting old one of these days. You're not going to be able to do this shit anymore, and it doesn't mean that you won't be as valuable of a person.
(03:56)
This is something that we do for fun because it is fun. This is enrichment, but it's not everything. You have to develop a sense of self. Remind yourself of who you are outside of the gym. If you overly identify with the gym and your performance in the gym, you're setting yourself up for some real bad mental health. So I would suggest reconnecting with other things that you love to contextualize what we do here in the gym sometimes, if this is the only thing that we're doing outside of work, then it becomes overly important to the point where your mental health really suffers. If you miss a lift or something, it's not that important. I love what we do, don't get me wrong, but it's just a part of our life. So I would suggest you take some time to focus on reconnecting with other things that are important to you.
(04:56)
Spend time with people that are important to you, other hobbies, and cultivate a sense of self outside of the gym because this is something that we do to enrich our lives, but it's not like life or death. If you're having trouble over identifying with the gym, look for some places that you can volunteer like at a food bank. Volunteering and helping people in your community is a great way to re-contextualize your life and remind yourself of what's actually important. Connection. Connection with other people, connection with ourselves. Also, trust that the depth of your squat, the form is going to come. Maybe you're not on there right now, or maybe you had a bad day, you're going to have those days. You're a human being and it doesn't say anything about who you are as a person. If you can't hit your squat depth one day, try being depressed about late stage capital like me.
(05:58)
Well, I think that the two sides of the same coin, because this system that we've grown up in, what we learned to value about ourselves is not our true selves. It's what we do. Our performance, being a good boy, a good girl, I mean, our worth is being measured from an early, early, early stage of being little middle school or elementary school kids having our work graded and then we mistake in this country, the whole fucking point is not to earn straight A's, be 100% perfect. The point is to grow as a person, be curious about the world. So we carry that with us into later stages of our life. But yeah, so what? You had a bad day. You got to set your expectations about yourself. What do you expect from yourself? Truly, this shit doesn't matter. The whole point of all of this is that we're just keeping our bodies healthy, that we're growing as people.
(07:03)
This should be a vehicle for self-development and self-exploration, but the gym is going to reflect back to you whatever you bring into it. At the same time, if you are looking for a reason to beat the shit out of yourself, you'll find one, right? If you're coming to the gym with that attitude of how can I pick myself apart and beat the shit out of myself, you'll find something to do that with. But if you instead have a growth mindset of all of this is just facilitating my personal growth journey and setbacks in the gym should be handled exactly the same way that we should handle setbacks in real life, which is, okay, that didn't work. What can we learn from this? Or is there something to learn from this? Because it might just be, I'm having a shitty day and it just didn't work.
(07:51)
Get it next time. This is an invitation, I think, for you to adjust your attitude that you bring with you into the gym and probably into other areas of your life. So I don't want to say harden up or stuff your feelings down that's not at all the answer. You got to feel your feelings. Your feelings are there to tell you something, and I think in this case, your feelings are telling you that you are over identifying with your performance in the gym for your self-worth. And it's not that you need to harden up, it's that you need to pay attention to how you're defining your sense of self and develop that in other ways because we have our true self who is, that's at our core of who we are, and then we, each of us put masks on to the world because none of us wear our heart on our sleeves and just are completely ourselves to the world.
(08:48)
We always have modes that we operate in depending on the social situation. So that mask is how we present to the world. Sometimes we mistake that mask for our true self. So maybe you're worried about other people judging you or something because you didn't get that squat depth or something. Who fucking cares? It's about you. How do you feel about you? You got to focus on your relationship with yourself. Your true self and your true self is valuable regardless of what fucking weight you put on the bar. I'm not going to tell you that your feelings are wrong because our feelings are data, but if you notice yourself having certain feelings, you had to be mindful of what kind of message are your feelings trying to send you? And I think your feelings are telling you, Hey, I don't feel like I'm worth it now.
(09:44)
I'm looking for evidence of that. I don't think I'm a worthwhile person. See, see, CI missed the squat, death. I knew I was a worthless person. So it's an invitation to reexamine your relationship with yourself. Maybe it's your inner child. That's what I always guess, because usually it's childhood trauma that is the source of self-worth issues. Not always, but a lot of times it goes back to childhood trauma. So I think it could be worthwhile to have a little meeting with your inner child, your younger self, and be the adult that he didn't have to reassure him that he's a worthwhile person and tell him all the things that you wish an adult had told you when you were that age. Whatever your first wound was to your self-worth, that part of you still exists and it still exists in that wound, and if left unattended to, it can become this thing where he's saying, I feel worthless, and then you in the present are looking for evidence of that because you could totally reframe it.
(10:59)
If you had a better relationship with yourself, a personal, a growth relationship with yourself, like a growth mindset, then you could talk to yourself differently and be like, well, we missed it this time, and that's okay. We'll get it next time. You have to be mindful of the way that you talk to yourself. I found it really helpful to start talking to myself as though I'm talking to my inner child, I'm the adult, but I'm also talking to my inner child, and that's helped me to stop being quite so mean to myself. I don't want to be an abusive piece of shit who says mean things to a child, and you kind of have to think about that every time you say mean things to yourself, you are saying it to your inner child. Find ways to remind yourself that your value is intrinsically tied to this one thing.
(11:43)
Yeah, that's why I think we need to have multiple hobbies. The gym shouldn't be your only hobby. It's good. It's a good hobby to have, but it should not be the only hobby because then you over identify yourself with it. Collect hobbies like Pokemon, the more hobbies you have, the more dopamine you have. If you stop being able to work out tomorrow, you need to know you still have reasons to exist. Exactly. That's why you got to have other, I've noticed with clients who, when they get injured, if they over identify with their workouts or if they over identify with working out as their one hobby, and that's where they get their self-worth from, they get injured or shit happens, life happens, and you can't make it to the gym for a week or two. You need to not have a complete mental breakdown when that happens.
(12:40)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I hope that you found this conversation helpful in thinking about your own setbacks that you experience, whether it's in the gym or in other aspects of your life. Keep in mind that you are so much more than the things that you do. You're so much more than your performance in the gym or what your physique looks like. You as a human being are special. You are worthy of love, and don't ever forget that. Even if you miss a lift, doesn't mean that you aren't a worthwhile person. I'm proud of you, and I can't wait to hear what your thoughts are on this episode. Leave them in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube. And once again, don't forget to subscribe to the channel and to follow the show. If you're listening on your podcast app now, I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure that you eat your veggies, drink your water, eat your protein, and prioritize your self-care. I will see you soon.
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Episode 61: How to Build a Healthy Relationship with Food (Without Deprivation) | 7 Mindset Shifts to Help You Eat Better
When most people decide to “eat healthier,” their first thought is usually, What do I need to cut out? That mindset can lead straight into a cycle of restriction, guilt, and burnout. But what if eating better didn’t have to mean giving up the foods you love? In my Healthy Diet Makeover coaching, I help people shift their focus from deprivation to nourishment. One of the first tools I teach is the Healthy Plate Model—filling half your plate with veggies, a quarter with protein, and the remaining quarter with carbs or healthy fats. But beyond the plate itself, there’s a deeper layer to long-term success: your mindset.
When most people decide to “eat healthier,” their first thought is usually, What do I need to cut out? That mindset can lead straight into a cycle of restriction, guilt, and burnout. But what if eating better didn’t have to mean giving up the foods you love?
In my Healthy Diet Makeover coaching, I help people shift their focus from deprivation to nourishment. One of the first tools I teach is the Healthy Plate Model—filling half your plate with veggies, a quarter with protein, and the remaining quarter with carbs or healthy fats. But beyond the plate itself, there’s a deeper layer to long-term success: your mindset.
Let’s explore some powerful mindset shifts that can help you create a healthy, lasting relationship with food—without ever feeling deprived.
1. From Restriction to Addition
Instead of thinking, What do I need to remove?, start asking, What can I add in?
This small shift in perspective helps you feel empowered rather than restricted. Rather than cutting carbs or your favorite snacks, start by adding more vegetables or an extra serving of protein. The more you nourish your body, the fewer cravings you experience—and the less you feel the need to “cheat.”
2. See Food as Fuel, Not a Reward or Punishment
It’s easy to label food as “good” or “bad,” but those moral labels usually create guilt or shame. The truth? All foods have a place. Some give your body nutrients and energy; others offer connection, comfort, or celebration.
Healthy eating isn’t about avoiding cake at a birthday party. It’s about making choices that support your energy and mood—most of the time—without turning food into a moral battleground.
3. Progress Over Perfection
Real talk: You’re going to have days where you eat takeout, forget to meal prep, or snack late at night. That’s not failure—that’s life. The goal isn’t to eat perfectly every day; it’s to build consistency over time.
One less-than-ideal meal doesn’t undo your progress. Let go of the “I blew it, so I’ll start over Monday” mindset. Just get back to your healthy habits at the next opportunity.
4. Tune Into Hunger and Fullness Cues
Diet culture often teaches us to ignore our body’s signals, but tuning back in is key. Ask yourself: Am I actually hungry? Am I satisfied yet?
Learning to trust your body’s natural cues can help you stop overeating, stop under-eating, and stop relying on external rules that don’t serve you.
5. Make Meals Enjoyable and Satisfying
Healthy food should taste good. If your meals feel like punishment, you’re going to crave the “fun” stuff even more.
Use herbs, spices, sauces, and textures to make meals something you actually look forward to. Satisfaction is a key part of fullness—and part of what keeps your healthy habits sustainable.
6. Ditch the “All or Nothing” Mentality
Health isn’t about being perfect. It’s about making small, supportive choices again and again.
Instead of thinking “I ruined everything with that cookie,” try “That was one choice. I can still make a nourishing dinner tonight.” Every meal is a chance to support your body—no need to wait until next week to get back on track.
7. Be Curious, Not Critical
If you find yourself slipping into old habits, avoid self-judgment. Instead, get curious: What was going on? Was I tired, stressed, rushed?
Approaching your habits like a detective (not a critic) helps you learn and grow rather than spiral into shame. I often recommend my clients keep a food and mood journal—not to track calories, but to uncover patterns and build awareness.
Final Thoughts
A healthy mindset toward food is just as important as the food itself. When you let go of rigid rules and shift into a mindset of nourishment, flexibility, and compassion, eating better becomes something you want to do—not something you have to do.
Want help making that mindset shift for yourself? My Healthy Diet Makeover coaching is designed to help you eat better without deprivation. Let’s build a way of eating that works for your life.
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Nutrition Coaching: Sign Up for My Healthy Diet Makeover Program
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Jayd (00:00):
If you have been trying to eat healthy and you've made a bunch of different attempts and nothing has stuck, it's likely that your relationship with food is the root of the problem. And until you fix your mindset and you fix your relationship with food, you're going to continue to struggle to eat healthy and to eat in a way that supports your fitness goals. So I have seven main tips that I want to give you that can help you to rethink your relationship with food and try to tackle this from another angle that might help you to be more successful.
(00:47)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share the wisdom that I share with my clients to help them to eat better, burn fat, and build muscle. In today's episode, we're talking about how to change your mindset towards your eating so that you can make sustainable changes in your diet. It's one thing to know what you should be doing in order to reach your fitness goals, but it's a completely different challenge to put that knowledge into action, which is where most of my clients struggle initially when they come to work with me. So in today's episode, I'm going to share seven mindset shifts that can help you to make meaningful change in your approach towards food. If you feel like you have a poor relationship with food or you have been trying to make changes to your diet unsuccessfully for a while, this podcast episode could be very helpful for you.
(01:45)
Now, before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video if you're watching on YouTube, and make sure to also subscribe to the channel so you always get the latest episodes and other videos that I drop throughout the week. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure that you follow the show so you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. And don't forget that if you do need additional help and guidance in changing up your eating patterns, you can subscribe to my coaching program Healthy Diet Makeover, and you can find information for that on my website, Jaydigains.com. I am accepting clients right now. So head over to the links in the show notes or in the video description to sign up for that. You can also get my Healthy Diet Makeover handbook, which has the content of the program as well as worksheets, a seven day meal plan and some recipes to help you step-by-step, change up how you're eating and form a healthier relationship with food. You can find links for all of that in the show notes and the video description. And without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:51)
I found that many people know what they're supposed to be doing. Many people know how to eat healthy. When I try to educate them on how to eat healthy, what I find is a lot of times they already know what they should be doing and teaching them what they should be doing doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a change in their behavior. When I was a younger trainer, I used to get really frustrated. I used to get really worked up like I'm telling them what they need to do. Why don't they just do it? And maybe you've thought that to yourself, I know what I'm supposed to do, why can't I just do it? And it's very frustrating. And so I've spent the better part of the last 10 years trying to figure out how do I help people to eat the way that they know that they should eat?
(03:36)
It's more than just telling them how to eat, but also how do we get you to the point where you're able to consistently eat the way that you need to eat? And what I found through my research is it's psychological in large part. So if you have been trying to eat healthy and you've made a bunch of different attempts and nothing has stuck, it's likely that your relationship with food is the root of the problem. And until you fix your mindset and you fix your relationship with food, you're going to continue to struggle to eat healthy and to eat in a way that supports your fitness goals, whether that's fat loss or muscle gains, or just generally eating better. If you aren't mindful of how you relate to food and your mindset towards food, then you're going to struggle to change your behavior towards food.
(04:33)
So today what I wanted to do was offer you a couple of tips that can help you to change your mindset and your relationship towards food so that you can start to make some meaningful gains towards eating better. So I have seven main tips that I want to give you that can help you to rethink your relationship with food and try to tackle this from another angle that might help you to be more successful. With that said, I do have to say, even with these seven tips, you still may struggle and it may be that you need help from a professional to guide you and coach you through the process. Our relationship with food often is wound up with our relationship with ourselves and our psychological wellbeing, our mental health, how we take care of ourselves in terms of exercise and how we eat is directly influenced by our relationship with ourself and our mental health.
(05:39)
So if you're struggling with mental health, well you know what? That makes sense given the time that we live in and what's going on in our society. I don't know anybody who isn't struggling with their mental health right now. That's very normal and it's okay to not be okay, but I do want to encourage you to seek out help working with a therapist, getting into group therapy, working with a dietician, a nutrition coach or a personal trainer can be really helpful. But with that said, here are seven things that can kind of get you started and rethinking your relationship with food. Number one, tune into your body's cues for hunger and fullness. I think a lot of people don't realize how dissociated they are from their bodies. Dissociated means that you're not really in touch with your body, like you're not listening to your body.
(06:34)
And we develop that practice of dissociating from our bodies. A lot of us from an early age, were taught to dissociate and not listen to our bodies. If you went to public school as a kid in the United States, you probably learned how to dissociate from your body because there were specific times in the day when you were allowed to go to the bathroom to go get a drink of water, to eat and add in there. If you also had any kind of childhood trauma, if you suffered a tragedy, if there was any kind of abuse, emotional, physical, whatever in your house or that you experienced. Our brains have this built in ability to dissociate, to remove you from your body so that you're not feeling what you're feeling to protect you psychologically. And it can be a helpful adaptation in really hard settings and really difficult settings.
(07:32)
However, it can have the negative effect later in life in situations where you need to be listening to your body. And if you don't have the habit of being in tune with your body, then you're going to struggle to feed yourself adequately, and you'll probably struggle to take care of yourself in other ways too. You might miss other cues from your body like, I need to sleep, I need water, I need to go to the bathroom. These are all just a couple of examples. Or if you're not used to listening to your body because you're more often dissociated or your mind is really occupied by stress, then it's going to be really hard for you to listen to your hunger and your fullness cues. And so when that happens, you might often find yourself mindlessly eating and eating way more than what you actually need.
(08:24)
You might miss your body's cues that it says, Hey, I'm full now we should stop eating because you're not actually feeling the feelings in your body until it's too late and your stomach hurts. And so you may have a habit of overeating because you miss those fullness cues because you're not actually in touch with your body. On the other side, you may have a habit of not feeding yourself adequately because you don't listen to your body's hunger cues, and that also can as well, and that can have really negative effects on your health. You can find yourself malnourished. You can find yourself even with an eating disorder. So either way, whether you miss your body's hunger cues or your fullness cues, that's not necessarily a healthy state of being. And so if that's something that you know about yourself or maybe you're thinking, yeah, I often do overeat or I often don't eat, I'll go all day without eating.
(09:27)
It may be because you're not tuned into your body's cues. And so what you want to do is develop a habit of listening to your body. Great ways to learn how to listen to your body is to practice what's called mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation are all about getting in touch with your present experiences and learning how to rewire your brain to pay attention to the sensations that your body feels in the present moment. And if you have a habit of dissociation, if you have a lot of trauma that's unprocessed, then this is going to be a struggle for you. And I would encourage you to seek out a therapist who does mindfulness or a group setting, a group therapy setting that's all about mindfulness. Pick up a book. There's lots of books and handbooks and workbooks on mindfulness, and there's even apps that will take you through guided meditations.
(10:24)
Certain types of exercise like yoga often incorporate mindfulness and mindfulness meditation into the training sessions. Many yoga practitioners will end their training sessions with a mindfulness meditation, a body scan where you go through your body from the top of your head all the way through to your shoulders, your arms, your torso, your hips, your legs, all the way to your toes where you notice the sensations of your body. That's called a body scan meditation. And that is a great way to teach you how to pay attention to your body, and it might help you to kind of carry that over into paying attention to when your body is telling you, Hey, I'm hungry, or Hey, I'm full. So listening to your cues will help you to feed yourself adequately to stop eating when you need to stop eating and to make sure that you eat when you need to eat.
(11:19)
So that's number one is get into with your body. Number two, which is kind of a follow-up. When you start paying attention to your body, when you start paying attention to your habits, a really bad spiral that a lot of people fall into, once they start paying attention to the behaviors, they start to become very critical of themselves. Once you start noticing things about yourself, you want to make sure that you are coming from a perspective of being curious and you're paying attention to your patterns. You're paying attention to the sensations of your body without judging. And that's another piece of mindfulness, which is why mindfulness is such a great therapeutic practice to get into. You want to practice that habit of observing without passing judgment, because in order to change your behavior meaningfully, you're going to need to become more mindful and notice your behavior more.
(12:23)
But if you notice something that's an unhelpful behavior and your immediate response is to start beating yourself up about it, then you are going to attack. Your brain is going to experience that as a trauma. Your body's going to experience that as though someone is bullying you. And so that thing that you're noticing about yourself is going to now be marked as a potential danger, right? Because your brain is like, oh, that's painful to think about because you start to shame yourself. You're going to start bullying yourself. You're expecting to be bullied when you notice those things about yourself, and you cannot make meaningful change when you don't feel safe. So if you're bullying yourself about the things that you want to change, you're not making yourself feel safe. So instead, what you want to do is kind of think about approaching yourself the way that you would a child who is learning the things that you're trying to learn.
(13:23)
You can kind of role play within your own mind of thinking about how if I were a child, how would I want an adult to handle this? I mean, if you were guiding a child through the behavior changes that you are trying to get from yourself, you wouldn't verbally abuse that child, right? You wouldn't call that child stupid for not getting it right the first time, right? Instead, I mean, unless you're an asshole, but if you're not an asshole, you'd be like, that's okay. We just got to keep trying. So think about it in that way. And that's inner child work, which is another type of therapy that can be really, really helpful, is developing a better relationship with your inner child, learning how to self parent and be the grownup in your life so that when you talk to yourself, you try to develop a practice of talking to yourself like the adult, talking to a child and trying to guide a child towards a changed behavior.
(14:22)
So being curious to notice things about yourself without passing judgment, taking the perspective of I'm the adult in my life, I'm going to talk to myself like a child who needs guidance is a great shift in your mentality that can help you to make more meaningful change, and that goes with healthy eating, but also just like anything else in your life too. So that's number two. Be curious, not critical. Number three, you also want to notice if you have this pattern of food as a reward or punishment. So giving yourself a little treat if you were good, that's something that you can do from time to time, but you just want to be careful because if you have a habit of overeating and you use food as a treat, then it can be very easy for you to kind of be like, oh, well, I was good today.
(15:12)
I got through this really stressful thing, so now I'm going to treat myself with a little bit of ice cream. Oh, now I've eaten the entire pint. Oh no, I've eaten the entire gallon. You know what I mean? And likewise, you want to be careful about withholding food from yourself as punishment. So thinking about how you approach yourself when you notice behaviors that you like or you don't like that are desirable or undesirable, do you punish yourself or do you reward yourself? And you want to be careful about using food as a punishment. Instead, what I suggest you do is think of food as fuel for your body. It's not a reward. It's not something that you take away to punish for yourself. It's a tool that you use to give your body energy, to give your body the protein that it needs to grow muscle and the vitamins that your body needs to function and fight, infection, fight diseases, and keep you healthy.
(16:07)
It is a tool, it is fuel. That is a mindset shift that could really help you if you tend to withhold food as punishment or use food as a reward for yourself. Try to change that relationship so that it's like, oh, no, this is just a morally neutral tool that my body needs, and I need certain amount of it and certain types of it so that I can feel better. It's not good. It's not bad. It just, it's fuel, right? So that's number three. Number four, from restriction to addition. This kind of goes with using food to punish yourself by withholding that restriction mindset, I find is very, very tough for a lot of people to make progress with. If you have a deprivation mindset towards food, you need to withhold from yourself. Or if you're on a diet and you're like, I need to withhold, I need to stop.
(17:05)
If you're so focused on what you can't have and what you shouldn't have and what you shouldn't do, and it's all about restriction, that is not going to last for very long. It's very hard psychologically for humans to operate under a restrictive mindset. Eventually your brain and your body are going to rebel against you because it's just that restriction. It's like walls that close in and eventually either they crush you or you just fully like, fuck this. It's too much. It's a lot of stress and a lot of added pressure to your brain. So instead of thinking if you're trying to eat healthier, if you're eating a lot of junk food or packaged food, or you're ordering a lot, instead of thinking, oh, I need to stop doing that. I needed to take this out, I need to avoid that. That's all about restriction, right?
(17:55)
Instead, what I would encourage you to do is focus on addition. What am I going to add to my diet? I want to hit a certain amount of X, Y, Z and reframe it into a positive approach. So that might look like, oh, I need to make sure that I eat three servings of veggies today. I need to hit my three veggies serving three servings of vegetable quota, and so I'm focusing on what I'm adding to my diet instead of what I can't have. Likewise, focusing on making sure that you hit your protein goal can be a really helpful shift. If you are my size, then you need 95 grams to 115 grams of protein every day. Most people don't eat enough of their protein, and most people struggle to hit their protein goals. And so you have to focus and you have to plan in order to eat enough protein.
(18:51)
And so when you focus on that, you're not really focused on deprivation and what I can't have. Instead, you're like, how am I going to do this? And when you focus on, for example, getting enough vegetables or getting enough protein, you will by default eat better, and you will by default, probably lower your calorie intake because instead of just eating whatever you feel like or eating by your feelings and just eating a bunch of junk food, instead you're focused on, I need to make sure that I eat enough of this thing and that thing so you don't feel deprived, but at the same time, it's still serving the ultimate goal, which is helping you to eat better overall. That's number four, from restriction to addition, very important mindset shift number five, make meals enjoyable and satisfying if you're trying to eat healthy, and your approach to that is, okay, I'm just going to eat raw vegetables with no salt, pepper, oil, or seasoning, and I'm just going to call it that, right?
(19:53)
If you're not seasoning food and trying to eat healthy, if you hate what you're eating, you're not going to stick to it. You're not. And that's the mistake that a lot of people make is they think that, oh, I just need to eat a bunch of raw vegetables that they don't like, no seasoning, nothing. And they'll eat just grilled chicken, no seasoning, nothing, no salt, no pepper. And then they're like, I hate this. I don't want to eat like this. Well, yeah, I wouldn't either. You don't have to eat really bland food in order to eat healthy. In fact, there's a lot of really flavorful, delicious healthy food out there. The Mediterranean diet is a perfect example of a diet plan or a nutrition cuisine, a style of cuisine that is tasty, full of vegetables, full of healthy fats and protein. Also like Indian food.
(20:48)
Another great example of a cuisine that is full of flavor, lots of vegetables, right? Chinese food, not Americanized Chinese food. I mean like traditional Chinese food, lots of vegetables, protein, and healthy fats. So there are lots of options for healthy eating. That's tasty too. So don't feel like you have to just eat really bland food. And if you want examples of tasty, healthy, well-balanced foods, I have some meal plans and recipe collections on my website, so you can check those out at my website, Jaydigains.com, because I put together a bunch of different recipe collections and meal plans with really tasty recipes that fit the healthy plate model that will get you protein, get you vegetables, healthy fats, right? Enough fiber and vitamins that your body needs. So don't settle for a super bland diet if you're trying to eat healthy. Number six, you got to ditch that all or nothing mentality.
(21:55)
This is something that a lot of my clients struggle with, and it will fucking hold you back. It's the most pervasive mentality, I'd say from my American clients in particular. And I think that's because maybe American society has a lot of those puritanical roots that had the standard of perfection, but that all or nothing standard of perfection mentality is going to sabotage your progress. It is not about being perfect. Your body does not even need you to be perfect in order to make progress. I often teach my clients the 80 20 rule. If 80% of the time you're eating the way that you need to eat, you're following the healthy plate model, which by the way looks like this. If 80% of the time your plates look like this, half of your plate is veggies or veggies and fruit, you get at least a fourth of your plate, a good source of lean protein, and then you're not overdoing it on the grains and starches.
(23:02)
Your grains and starches are prioritizing whole grains and complex carbohydrates. If most of the time you eat like that, then you give yourself a little bit of wiggle room. 20% of the time you can treat yourself and not eat like that. And if you do that, you will make progress. You will make progress if you're doing that most of the time or if most of the time you're eating within your macros goals or within your calorie goals, okay? You do not have to be perfect in order to make progress. And number seven, which brings us to number seven, progress is more important than perfection. So even if you're not even doing 80% eating like that 80% of the time, if you were doing 0% of the time two weeks ago and now you're doing a little bit more, that's a win. And I want you to focus on celebrating your wins and making a big fucking deal about them, because every little step towards healthier habits is a win.
(24:02)
And the more that we celebrate those wins, it's just like with training a child or training a dog. When you are rewarding yourself by celebrating those wins, give yourself that dopamine hit, fuck yeah, I did it. Give yourself a pat on the back. Give yourself a sticker, right? Those little celebrations train your brain to do whatever it was that you just did again and again and again, which makes it easier for you to do without even thinking about it in the future. And it also makes it easier to add on other additional habits. So reward yourself for every little tiny step in the right direction, even if you're not yet doing all the things or 80% of the things, every single step matters. So those are my seven tips for changing your mindset around your approach, towards your diet and your fitness overall. And these seven tips are really applicable to anything when it comes to your personal growth.
(25:06)
But it is worth thinking about. Again, if you struggle with your mindset and your relationship towards food, number one, it's very common. I think a lot of us, especially if you were raised in the United States, a lot of us struggle with our relationships and our mindsets towards food. So you're not alone. It's not you. It's not that you're broken or anything. We just don't really live in a very healthy society. A lot of us, were not taught or modeled healthy relationships with food. So it is something that if we want to be better, we kind of have to put a lot of effort and energy towards that. But it can absolutely be done. I have tons of clients who will tell you that after working with me making these mindset shifts and also going through my Healthy Diet Makeover program, whether they work with me one-on-one coaching, or they just read the book and apply the books, principles, every single client that I've had go through this program tells me that it has completely changed their mindset towards food, to the point where they're like, they actually crave vegetables, which they used to hate vegetables.
(26:07)
They notice when they haven't eaten enough protein, so they more often eating enough protein. And those are really the most important things when it comes to changing your diet. A lot of it comes down to eating more vegetables and eating enough protein, but you're not alone. You definitely can change. So if you started to think to yourself, maybe I'm just meant to be like this. Maybe I just never going to eat healthy, it's not true. That's a limiting mindset, right? So remember, growth and progress over perfection. You can do this. I know you can do this, but if you want some help, if you want a little extra guidance, I am open and I'm taking clients right now for my Healthy Diet Makeover coaching program. I will put links to that in the show notes or the video description. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm happy to help.
(26:57)
Or you can just order my Healthy Diet Makeover handbook, and the book will walk you through the program on your own. You can work at it at your own pace. This has the five steps that I put my clients through to give their diets a healthy makeover, and it also includes some sample recipes and a sample seven day meal plan that you can use, rinse, repeat, modify for your own diet. So there's resources out there for you and you can do it, but all of it comes down to your mindset. So use these seven tips to think about your approach towards food and just know that you can do it. I believe in you. I do. I do.
(27:44)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I hope that you found this discussion helpful. I would love to know what questions you have or thoughts that you might have after watching or listening to this episode. If you are on YouTube, leave those in the comments to this video. And again, make sure that you like the video if you found it helpful, and subscribe to my channel, and if you're listening to the podcast, follow the show. I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure that you eat your veggies, eat your protein, drink your water, and take care.
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Episode 60: 10 Foods that Boost Your Calorie Burn
Fat loss isn’t just about eating less. Yes, maintaining a calorie deficit is essential for fat loss—but not all calories are created equal. Certain foods can actually give your metabolism a helpful nudge, making it easier for your body to burn fat. In this episode, I highlight 10 metabolism-boosting foods that also come with additional health perks. In this week’s episode, we’re tackling a hot topic that comes up all the time: Which foods can actually help with fat loss?
Welcome back to the Coaching Corner Podcast! I’m Jayd Harrison, your go-to guide for all things fitness, nutrition, and sustainable fat loss. In this week’s episode, we’re tackling a hot topic that comes up all the time: Which foods can actually help with fat loss?
Spoiler alert: it’s not just about eating fewer calories. The real magic happens when you include foods that naturally boost your metabolism and increase calorie burn during digestion.
Fat Loss Isn’t Just About Eating Less
Yes, maintaining a calorie deficit is essential for fat loss—but not all calories are created equal. Certain foods can actually give your metabolism a helpful nudge, making it easier for your body to burn fat. In this episode, I highlight 10 metabolism-boosting foods that also come with additional health perks.
Here’s a sneak peek at what I cover:
Protein-rich foods – for muscle preservation and high thermic effect
Spicy foods – like chili peppers that raise your body’s calorie burn
Green tea – packed with antioxidants and metabolism-enhancing compounds
Coffee – in moderation, it can increase fat oxidation
Water – simple but powerful for satiety and metabolic function
Seaweed – a surprising source of iodine for thyroid support
Whole grains – for sustained energy and digestive health
Apple cider vinegar – may help with blood sugar control and appetite
Lentils & legumes – loaded with fiber and plant-based protein
Dark leafy greens – nutrient-dense and low-calorie
Each of these foods plays a role in helping your body burn more calories, stay fuller longer, and support your overall wellness.
Practical Tips for Your Fat Loss Journey
In addition to the food breakdown, I also talk about how to:
Build meals that support a calorie deficit without feeling deprived
Stay mindful of portions and hunger cues
Combine smart nutrition with consistent exercise for the best results
If you're looking to take your results to the next level, be sure to check out my Healthy Diet Makeover. It’s a guide that walks you through how to optimize your eating for both muscle building and fat loss, without fad diets or restriction.
Links:
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Jayd (00:00):
I think what a lot of people do in their approach to fat loss is they focus on, oh, I need to eat low calorie foods. But I think that you can greatly improve your fat loss success by also placing the focus on foods that are actually going to burn more calories for you to digest things that actually boost your metabolism. And so this is like a little list that you can kind of refer to, maybe add a little bit more, squeeze a little bit more out of your diet. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've created this podcast to share some of the tips and tricks that I share with my personal training clients. I've been a personal trainer for over 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share the tips and tricks that I share with my personal training clients to help them build muscle, get strong and burn fat.
(00:57)
In today's episode, I'm sharing 10 foods that you can add into your weekly meal plan to boost your metabolism and burn more fat. I myself am on a fat loss journey right now and I'm making a couple of different changes to how I eat in order to maximize fat loss while also retaining the muscle that I've built over the last year of bulking. If you like the tips and tricks that I'm sharing in this podcast episode, make sure that you check out my Healthy Diet Makeover book, which you can buy on Amazon or you can download the ebook from my website. This is a step-by-step guide on how to clean up your diet and eat healthy to maximize your fat loss and build muscle and get strong. So you can purchase this from the links in the video description below. If you're watching on YouTube, you can also find links to it in the show notes. Without further ado, let's get into the episode and take a look at 10 foods that you should add to your diet to boost your metabolism and burn more calories.
(02:01)
Now that I am in my cut phase, I figured this is a great time for us to talk about changes that I'm making to my diet that maybe can be helpful for you if you are in a fat loss phase. Specifically what I want to talk about today are foods that you can eat to boost your metabolism. When we use the phrase boost your metabolism, what we're actually referring to is getting your body burning more calories because when it comes to fat loss, we want our body burning more calories than what we're eating every day. The main way that we get ourselves into a calorie deficit where our body's burning more calories than what we're eating is one, we are controlling what we're eating and being mindful of what we're eating, making sure that we're eating less than our maintenance level of calories, which is the amount of calories that our bodies need to stay the same.
(02:51)
So eating a calorie deficit by tracking what you eat or following a meal plan that is for the number of calories that your body needs in order to burn fat. The other ways that we get our bodies burning more calories is through exercise. Cardiovascular exercise can help your body to burn calories during the workout, and resistance training can boost your overall everyday calorie burn by building more muscle. Muscle building is a calorie expensive activity and your body burns more calories when you have more muscle, but you can take it a step further and in addition to being mindful of the calories that you're eating, some foods that you eat can actually get your body burning more calories. Now it's a small amount, but that adds up over time. So you can choose foods that take more energy for your body to break down or that boost your metabolism, boost the amount of calories that your body burns in some way.
(03:46)
So I have a list of 10 foods that you can eat to boost your metabolism and get your body burning more calories to help push you along in your fat loss and accelerate it a little bit. So one of course is protein rich foods. This is a must have for any fitness-based diet, whether you're trying to burn fat or build muscle protein is so important because it is the building blocks of your muscle. When you eat protein, your body breaks that protein down into amino acids and then reconstructs them into actual muscle protein and adds it into your muscles to make your muscles grow bigger and stronger. So eating plenty of protein is a really great way for you to boost your metabolism because that process of breaking the food down into its protein and then breaking the protein down into amino acids and then rebuilding using the amino acids to rebuild into muscle protein, that's a lot of steps and every process that your body runs requires energy.
(04:50)
It's like electricity, right? Any process that your computer runs takes electricity to run, and if you don't have your computer plugged in and you're running high energy taking processes on your computer, your computer battery is going to go down really fast, right? Similar thing happens when we eat foods that can boost our metabolism. When we give our bodies multiple steps that they have to go through in order to break that food down and then turn it into muscle or turn it into energy that you can use that makes your body burn more calories. So protein-rich foods, things like poultry, chicken, right? Turkey. Turkey is my favorite. Fish eggs and then vegetarian sources of protein, things like Tempe, tofu, legumes, beans. These are all really great sources of protein that your body can use to build muscle and also burn more calories during digestion. It's not just about building muscle, but it's also when you're eating enough protein, your body doesn't actually crave sugary types of foods.
(06:02)
You don't feel that low energy as much. I noticed with a lot of my clients who need to make that switch to eating more protein, if their diet is a lot of carbohydrate or fat-based foods and they're not eating enough protein, they often feel low energy. So eating protein rich foods covers a lot of bases. It reduces your hunger cravings between meals. It's more satiating, so you feel more full from eating high protein foods and also your body burns more calories, breaking down protein and turning it into muscle or using it for energy. Then foods that are like simple sugars, right? Number two, spicy food. So spicy foods contain a compound called capsaicin, which can slightly increase calorie burning and also reduce your appetite. So if you can handle eating spicy food, adding hot sauce or chopped peppers to your meals and to your snacks can boost your metabolism and get your body burning more calories a little bit and also reduce your cravings.
(07:04)
So adding more spicy food into your diet, definitely a good approach when you're trying to increase your calorie burn. Of course, caffeine is another thing that can help boost your metabolism. Drinking green tea in particular, which is our number three food, green tea has a lot of metabolism boosting properties. One of course it has the caffeine and caffeine can support fat burning, but it also helps to reduce your appetite as well. And it also has antioxidants, which are good for everything, boosting your metabolism as well as boosting your immune system to keep you healthy overall. So green tea is one of those foods or drinks that I think is a really great thing to add into your diet, even if you're not in a fat loss phase, but especially when you're burning fat, when you're in a fat loss phase. Green tea can help, even the decaffeinated green tea can be good to add into your diet because again, you get those antioxidants, but the caffeine helps quite a bit as well.
(08:10)
And then of course, coffee, which is my main source of caffeine that I drink every day because it has that caffeine in it, it can temporarily increase your metabolic rate and also give you a feeling like you have energy to get up and get moving and do more stuff too. That's the other benefit of caffeine, right? Without caffeine in the morning, I kind of feel a little bit lazy and I don't want to get up and moving, but when I have caffeine in my system, I'm more likely to get up and moving. So that also helps me to burn more calories through meat, my non-exercise activities, so my non-exercise calorie burn goes up when I have enough caffeine. Just be careful with the caffeine. Know your limits. Everybody's body is different. For mine, I can stand to have four cups of coffee a day, and that's what I usually do.
(08:59)
For some people, they can't handle more than one cup, and that's fine. Listen to your body and you don't have to do caffeine, but if you like caffeine and your body does fine on caffeine, using caffeine during your fat loss phase can be helpful. And number five, something that somebody in chat already mentioned. Water, drinking plenty of water, your body needs water. It is mostly made up of water, and I would argue that most people are chronically dehydrated. Most people do not drink as much water as they need, but it's essential for your body's functioning for you to feel healthy. But it also, if you are trying to burn fat, drinking water is a huge boost for that, especially if you drink cold water because your body has to bring whatever you're drinking, it has to bring it to a temperature that it can absorb, and if you drink cold water, your body has to spend some extra calories warming the water up so that your body can absorb it. So drinking cold water is a great way to kind of just slightly increase your daily calorie burn.
(10:07)
But of course, hydration supports your cellular functioning, which includes your fat metabolism, so drinking plenty of water. Also, I think that a lot of people have a tendency to snack or crave sugary salty foods when they're dehydrated. It's not uncommon to mistake your body's thirst signals for snack ishness. So drinking plenty of water can kind of reduce the amount of snack ishness and hunger that you feel between meals or between snacks, and it can decrease your total calorie intake through the day because when you drink plenty of water, your belly is going to feel more full, more often because it's literally full of water. So staying hydrated is a great way to keep your calorie burn high. Another one, if you're a sushi fan, if you like Asian food, number six, seaweed. Seaweed is a natural source of iodine, which is really important for healthy thyroid function, and your thyroid regulates your metabolism.
(11:13)
So keeping your thyroid healthy and happy should be a priority at all times, but especially when you're in a fat loss phase and you're trying to boost your metabolism. Now, sushi in general is higher calorie because it's like a lot of rice, but you can snack on seaweed. They have these little seaweed strips that you can buy. They're crunchy. Some people will use that kind of like the way that they would use a wrap or a chip, but just be mindful of how much you're eating though, don't overdo it. Number seven, whole grains especially anything that's going to have a lot of dietary fiber in it, dietary fiber is going to make you feel fuller because it's going to expand in your belly, especially if you drink enough water. So it'll make you feel fuller, keep you set more satisfied between meals, but also all grains are basically seeds, right?
(12:07)
They're the seeds of the wheat plant or rice plant, and refined grains have gone through a process where they remove the outer shell of that seed or the husk. Whole grains are when the outer husk or shell is still intact. So things like oats, brown rice versus white rice, whole wheat versus refined wheat or white wheat. These are examples of grains that contain that outer husk and that outer husk has more fiber in it. It also is a good source of iron as well, but it takes your body longer to digest whole grains than it does refined grains because your body has to break through that outer shell, that husk. You have to do that within your digestive tract. Remember, anytime your body has to run an extra system to break down food, then that burns more calories. So you not only are making yourself feel fuller by increasing your daily dietary fiber, reducing your cravings between meals because your belly is more full, but also while you're digesting that food, your body is burning more calories.
(13:17)
Another thing about whole grains that's really helpful is that they stabilize your blood sugar and they reduce your cravings. So you've probably experienced when you eat a high sugar or a food that has a lot of refined sugar, where you get that boost of energy and then that big dip in energy. A lot of times that big dip in energy that happens usually in the middle of the day or between meals is a dip in your blood sugar levels. When you eat a lot of refined sugar or refined grains, you might see more drastic dips in your energy levels, but eating more whole grains and food that is complex carbohydrates versus simple carbohydrates is a great way to keep your blood sugar more stable. Now, number eight, apple cider vinegar. There are some studies that suggest that apple cider vinegar may support fat loss and help to control blood sugar levels, which does impact your metabolic function.
(14:15)
However, I do want to say as a caveat, we talked about before on the podcast, certain scammers who were pushing apple cider vinegar as this panacea wonder food super food that was going to solve all of your problems. It's not going to solve all of your problems. It is one thing that can help, can help, but it's not going to be just start drinking apple cider vinegar, which is kind of like, I don't know if it's so much these days, but a couple of years ago, about 10 years ago, it was like all the rage, and you saw so many people on social media who were just like, you just need to drink a shot of apple cider vinegar and not really change anything else about your life. It's not going to change your life, but it's something that can help. Number nine, lentils and legumes are a great choice for your veggies.
(15:02)
If you follow the healthy plate model and you aim to eat lots of veggies throughout the day, which you should, even if you're not in a fat loss phase, you should still be aiming to eat lots and lots of vegetables, but especially choosing things like lentils and legumes. One, they're higher in protein, which we already talked about how protein, eating higher protein foods can help boost your metabolism. They're also high in dietary fiber, which can help reduce your calorie intake, reduce cravings. They take longer for your body to digest, so that also boosts your metabolism. So try to aim for including some lentils and legumes a couple times throughout the week in your meals. My gosh, I love lentils. They're my favorite. And actually right now in my garden, I'm going to have a couple of beans ready to harvest that you know I'm going to be snacking on.
(15:54)
I have a bunch of snack peas, a bunch of just garden beans, so yummy to just snack on or add two salads or pasta dishes, that kind of thing. And number 10, dark leafy greens, things like spinach, kale, and Swiss chard. These guys, they cover a lot of bases for us to help our bodies to burn more calories. They support thyroid function. They're rich in iron, magnesium, and B vitamins, which are all things that support your thyroid function. And again, your thyroid is what determines your metabolism, or it impacts your metabolism. So you can boost your energy expenditure by eating foods that support your thyroid function, like dark leafy greens. And with these, you might have salads, right? That's always a good option. It's an easy meal prep option is to just build out a bunch of salads and eat them throughout the week. But you can also add these dark leafy greens to things like smoothies, so you can have kind of a sweet but high veggie intake type of meal.
(17:06)
You can add them to omelets or little egg cups. That's one of my favorite things. Make little egg cups that are like muffins made of eggs with some added ingredients, including leafy greens or stir fries. All of these are really great options. You can use leafy greens as wraps instead of using a tortilla, you could use a couple of kale or large spinach leaves. That's another thing that I'm growing in my garden right now. Super easy to just go out there and like a cow. So those are 10 foods that you can add to your diet if you want to increase your daily calorie burn just through the food that you're eating. Those are changes that I'm making to my diet to help my body reach my fat loss goal faster. And also notice how all of the foods that we have mentioned besides coffee and green tea, all green tea has its benefits, but all of them have other benefits as well to your health. So it's good to be including these foods anyway, even if you're not burning fat. But if you are trying to burn more fat and you want to increase your total calorie burn, add these 10 foods into your diet.
(18:26)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you're interested in working with me or learning more about the products and services that I offer, head to my website, Jaydigains.com. And don't forget to check out my Healthy Diet Makeover book, which you can buy from Amazon or download from my website to start the process of cleaning up your diet in five easy steps. You'll find links for that in the show notes. If you're listening to this podcast or in the video description, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel if you're on YouTube so that you always get the latest videos that I drop. If you're listening, make sure that you have followed the show so you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. I'll see you in the next episode. And in the meantime, make sure that you eat your veggies, eat your protein, stay hydrated, and take good care of yourself. I'll see you next time.
Subscribe for Updates ✉️
Sign up to get notified whenever new episodes drop. Opt in for more tips on training, fat loss, and nutrition by filling out the form below:
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Episode 59: Tips for Getting Better Rest to Maximize Your Gains
If you’re serious about building muscle, losing fat, or leveling up your performance, here’s a truth you need to hear: rest is not a luxury—it’s a necessity. In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I break down why rest and recovery are just as important as your workouts. In fact, without proper rest, you’re not just stalling progress—you could be actively sabotaging your gains.
If you’re serious about building muscle, losing fat, or leveling up your performance, here’s a truth you need to hear: rest is not a luxury—it’s a necessity.
In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I break down why rest and recovery are just as important as your workouts. In fact, without proper rest, you’re not just stalling progress—you could be actively sabotaging your gains.
The Problem With "No Days Off" Culture
We live in a world that praises the "rise and grind" mindset. Hustle harder. Sleep when you're dead. But when it comes to your health and fitness, that mentality can be more harmful than helpful.
Chronic stress, poor sleep, and overtraining can lead to:
Plateaus in strength and fat loss
Hormonal imbalances
Increased risk of injury
Mental burnout and low motivation
Your body needs downtime to recover, rebuild, and adapt.
The Role of Your Nervous System in Recovery
In the episode, I explain the key roles of the sympathetic nervous system (your “go” mode) and the parasympathetic nervous system (your “rest and repair” mode). To make real progress in the gym—or in any physical pursuit—you need to allow your body to shift out of high-alert and into deep recovery.
Training breaks your body down. Rest is where the magic of growth actually happens.
How to Optimize Your Recovery
Here are a few of the recovery tips I discuss in the episode that you can start using today:
1. Take Regular Rest Days
At least 1–2 rest days per week should be part of your training plan. Think of them as active recovery days, not lazy days. Go for a walk, do some mobility work, or just let your body chill.
2. Prioritize Sleep
Sleep is where most of your recovery happens—both physically and mentally. Aim for 7–9 hours a night, and try to:
Stick to a consistent sleep schedule
Limit screen time 1 hour before bed
Keep your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet
3. Manage Your Stress
Chronic stress keeps your body in "go mode." Use tools like breathwork, journaling, meditation, or even short walks to regulate your nervous system and shift into recovery mode.
4. Listen to Your Body
Fatigue, irritability, poor performance, and restless sleep are signs you may be under-recovered. Don’t ignore them. Adjust your training volume or intensity when needed.
Final Thoughts: Rest Is a Tool, Not a Weakness
If you’ve been pushing hard and not seeing results, it might be time to zoom out and rethink your approach. Rest isn’t the opposite of work—it’s what makes your work effective.
Want to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode here and subscribe to the Coaching Corner Podcast for more evidence-based fitness strategies.
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Jayd (00:00):
Balance out as much as you are active in your training, as much as your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you have to balance that out with effective rest. So you need to think about rest as it's like yin and yang, right? You can't have one without the other. You can't have gains without rest. You work hard in the gym, but you have to balance it out with effective rest. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share with you some of the tips and tricks that I share with my personal training clients to help them to build muscle, burn fat and get strong. In today's episode, I'm going to share with you a conversation that I had with my Twitch channel where we were talking about the importance of rest.
(00:54)
Now, when a lot of us think about fitness, we often think about the workouts and the energy expenditure as well as eating healthy. But another really important factor of the total equation of your health is getting proper rest. Now that includes time resting from exercise or time resting from stressing your body as well as the rest that you get while you're sleeping every night. In this episode, I'll show you why it's so important for you to get good rest, and it'll also give some tips to help you get good rest and a good night's sleep that you can maximize your gains. Before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video if you're watching on YouTube and subscribe to the channel, and if you are listening to this episode, make sure that you follow the show so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. If you are interested in the services and products that I offer, head to my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N s.com. I am taking on personal training clients at the moment, so check out the coaching program options on my website and without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:05)
This topic that we're going to talk about, I call rest, is gains. I think it's a very particular thing to American culture, but I'm sure it's in other places too, but Americans in particular do not like to rest. We have this hustle culture and it's pretty toxic to be honest. It can be good and motivating you to push forward, but we're not machines. We're living creatures, and part of being a living creature is that we do need rest. I think we need to reframe how we think about rest. A lot of times people think of rest as being lazy or a cop out. I should be productive, I should be doing something right now. But rest itself is a system of your body and it is productive and that's why I like to say rest is gains. You have two different operating systems of your nervous system.
(03:10)
One is the sympathetic nervous system, one is the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is your action system. And when your sympathetic nervous system is activated, that's when your body releases go hormones like adrenaline and cortisol and hormones that get you motivated to do things, do, do, do, do, right? So when you are working out, that's sympathetic nervous system. If you get stressed, if you're stressed by work or you're anxious and you're trying to get something done, that is sympathetic nervous system activation. Your parasympathetic nervous system is what we call your rest and digest system. The parasympathetic nervous system is activated when you're at rest, when you're sleeping, and that system is what turns on to turn the food that you eat into muscle and to repair damaged tissue. So when you're sick, one of the reasons why we want you to rest right when you're sick is that allows the parasympathetic nervous system to take over and activate all of the healing and the repairs, and it helps with your immune system, right?
(04:26)
Because when we're working out in the gym, we're not actually building muscle, we're breaking muscle down. That's what effective training does. It actually causes damage, controlled damage to the muscles, so you're not building anything when you're working out. It's triggering the systems that when you go to sleep, then you actually build the muscle. Your body turns all that protein that you've eaten into muscle protein. So it's important to prioritize rest and balance out as much as you are active in your training, as much as your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you have to balance that out with effective rest. So you need to think about rest as it's like yin and yang. You can't have one without the other. You can't have gains without rest. You work hard in the gym, but you have to balance it out. With effective rest. You'll probably see people who really rise and grind and it's toxic.
(05:24)
And you see this in the fitness world with people who say things like no days off and they do every workout that they do, four or 5, 6, 7 days a week is really, really hard and it's really high intensity. There's no recovery. They're not focused on doing mobility work. They're not focused on doing rehabbing or pre rehabbing exercises. They skip their warmups, they skip their cool downs. Those are people who've internalized this rise and grind mentality, and those are the same people who often end up getting injury after injury after injury or burning out, falling off the wagon and stopping, working out completely and gaining a bunch of weight. That rise and grind mentality is a threat to your gains, but also your overall wellbeing. So remember Ed, you got to balance the two as hard as you train in the gym, you also make sure that you're getting effective rest.
(06:23)
So it's important that you prioritize resting in a couple of different ways. One, take your rest days. You do not need to be working out every single day of the week, okay? No days off is toxic. You can get up and move around and you can get some activity in every day, that's fine, but you shouldn't be stressing your body every single day because your body needs time to recover and make repairs. So at least at the very least, take a rest day once a week, seven days, but that's really cutting it close. You really should be taking a rest day after every two to three workout days. If you want to avoid burning out or getting injured, you can just lay around and be lazy if you want, if that's what your body needs, listen to your body. But if you want to get up and moving, you want to actually be active, then go for a light walk, right?
(07:16)
Don't do anything too stressful, but you can still get up and move around. Clean your house. Light intensity activities like that that aren't going to stress the body, but get the blood flowing can be good for your recovery too. Doing some yoga is also good, some stretching, maybe some foam rolling. Go for a walk with a friend or with your dog. Just avoid something that's going to be too high intensity on your body. On the other hand, in addition to taking rest days and giving your body the time to recuperate and recover every couple of days after you've worked out, it's also super important that you're prioritizing getting a good night's sleep as often as you can because sleep is when that rest and digest parasympathetic nervous system is activated. If you are not sleeping well, then your body's not running that system as efficiently as it could, which means you were going to miss out on gains because your body is not actually doing the rebuilding, the breaking down of your nutrition and turning it into muscle.
(08:18)
That's not happening as much because you're not sleeping and it's when you're sleeping that that system runs. So everybody needs to focus on and prioritize getting a good night's sleep on most nights and how much sleep you need really varies from person to person, but it's usually somewhere between eight and 10 hours of good quality sleep per night and that you might need more. Women in general tend to need to sleep more. And then depending on where you are in your cycle, you might need to sleep more too. If you are in your luteal phase or on your period, you may need to sleep more. If you're in a high intensity block of your training, you likely will need to sleep more too. So how much activity you get, how much exercise you get and how intense your workouts are will also require more sleep.
(09:06)
So a lot of times people say that they need to sleep more when they're on a cut, when you're in a calorie deficit, which makes sense, right? Because your body is slower at making repairs, it's not going to be as efficient at making repairs. So you'll likely need to sleep more in order for your body to actually keep up with the recovery that it needs from your workouts when you're not eating as many calories as your body needs. So it's definitely worthwhile prioritizing, getting good sleep. But this is the one thing that I think most of my friends struggle with the most for a number of reasons. There's a lot of reasons why people don't sleep enough. One is that a lot of us tend to not go to bed when we need to, which is definitely the case for me, especially if I've had a really shitty day.
(09:58)
If I've been really busy all day and I've had meeting after meeting task after task and I haven't really had any time to unwind, I'm more likely to engage in what some people call revenge bedtime. Revenge bedtime is a silly little term. I don't know where it came around, but I heard about it on TikTok. But revenge bedtime is when you feel like the day was not yours, and so you're taking time to yourself as revenge for the day, not feeling like it belonged to you, and you end up pushing past your bedtime to give yourself more time to yourself and then you end up going to bed like an hour, two hours, three hours or more past when you actually need to. So I'm more likely to do that when I'm really overly busy, if I'm overly worked and really stressed. So not going to bed when you need to get enough rest.
(10:49)
That's one thing that's pretty easy to actually change though. You just kind of have to get more organized and disciplined around it. I set a bedtime reminder on my phone so my phone will tell me, Hey, it's time to wind down. Now, ideally for myself, and this is what I found over the last couple of years, ideally for me, I want to be in bed at 9 30, 9 30 pm That gives me plenty of time to read a little bit to wind down and go to sleep. So I have my phone remind me at like eight 15 way ahead of time, like, Hey, your bedtime's coming up soon. And then it actually goes ahead and it goes into sleep mode on my phone. So I'm not getting new alerts that are triggering because new alerts is one thing that can get my sympathetic nervous system fired up, get me into problem solving mode, and you know what I mean?
(11:39)
So my phone doesn't, my phone, my computer, they don't send me alerts after 8:15 PM because that is my winding down before bedtime. So as long as I actually stick to that and I'm disciplined about going to bed in time, then that gives me plenty of time to sort of wind down before I actually have to go to sleep. For me, I'm not the kind of person that can just lay down and go right to sleep. I need to be in bed reading a book and giving myself a good stretch of 20 minutes to be ready to sleep. And if I wait too long, then I'll get a second wind, which is the worst dude. It's the worst when you get the second wind and you're like, now I'm like two or three hours late of my bedtime, and I'm like, my brain is re-fired up.
(12:27)
So setting a bedtime for yourself and sticking to it is an easy fix, easy way for you to get more effective rest. And that goes to say it's also important, getting into a consistent sleep schedule is a part of that. Your body doesn't really understand the difference between weekends and weekdays. Your circadian rhythm runs on a 24 hour cycle. So it is helpful if you can keep your bedtime and your waking time consistent on most days. So where you're going to sleep at about the same time and you're waking up at about the same time, it'll be so much easier for you to get effective rest if you keep your sleep schedule consistent, right? Going to bed at about the same time and trying to wake up at the same time, even on the weekends and on the weekdays. I mean, initially it's hard to get your body into that routine, but the more that you try to stick to that, the more your body will actually automatically start winding down, leading up to your planned bedtime.
(13:29)
So stick to a consistent routine and try to wake up at the same time and go to sleep at the same time, even on the weekends, if you have trouble getting to sleep, make sure that you're creating a sleep friendly environment for yourself. If your bedroom is hot and there's lots of lights, our bodies are queued to get sleepy when we are in a cool dark environment. So I don't run the air conditioning very much in my house during the day. I am okay with being warmer, but at night, that's when I turn the air conditioning on and I bump it down a little bit to make sure that it's cool enough. I know I'm going to wake up and I'm going to be dehydrated because I'll sweat if it's warm. So bumping down the air conditioning, turning on a fan, making sure that there's some air flow, and then making sure that the light in my room is dim, leading up to bedtime.
(14:22)
I have a little salt lamp that I can dim, I can turn down and turn up. So it makes this nice warm soft light. That's what I have on 20 to 60 minutes before I plan to go to sleep, and I don't have any of the big lights on after eight 15. I also have like noise canceling, or not noise canceling, but blackout curtains. I have blackout curtains in my bedroom to keep the streetlight from waking me up. And I also have an air purifier that I run to give me some white noise because I need white noise, otherwise every little sound will wake me up. Figure out the conditions that you sleep best in and try to make sure that your sleep environment, sleep friendly environment has those things consistently figure out. If you prefer to sleep warm, then make sure that your environment is warmer.
(15:12)
If you prefer to sleep cooler, make sure that you're cool enough and make sure that your sleep environment is consistently setting you up for being able to fall asleep when you go there. Also, limit your exposure to electronic devices experts, say within an hour or two hours before you plan on going to sleep. The reason is because electronic devices is a lot of light shining right into your eyes and light cues our body circadian rhythms. So naturally as it starts to get dark, your body naturally starts to get sleepy, but that doesn't happen as much if you're on electronic devices and screens that are shining light into your eyes that can kind of interfere with that process. So wearing blue light blocker glasses can help, but still you don't really want to be looking at any bright screens or have any bright lights on within an hour or two before you plan on going to bed.
(16:09)
And also, it's like I said with the notifications too, that can be triggering, right? If you see a notification, you check your email, that can activate your sympathetic nervous system and get your adrenaline pumping or get you stressed, which will make it hard for you to fall asleep. So that's another reason to avoid the electronic devices. And also, if you have a hard time sleeping and you drink coffee or caffeinated beverages, or if you vape, if you smoke, if you use nicotine, if you use zens, avoid using those things or drinking those things before bedtime. At least four to six hours is ideal because stimulants will activate your sympathetic nervous system, which will make it harder for you to fall asleep or get effective sleep. So be careful about drinking coffee too close to bed or drinking sodas that have caffeine in them or vaping or using zens or whatever your stimulant of choice is.
(17:10)
Be mindful also of hidden sources of caffeine, like chocolate, especially if you eat dark chocolate or if you have hot chocolate that has a little bit of caffeine in it. Green tea and just like black tea as well, have caffeine in it. And some medications also have caffeine in them, so just be mindful of stimulants. Some medications are stimulants, like if you have a DHD, you don't want to take your A DHD medicine right before bed because it's stimulant. Let's see what else? You want to also manage your stress. I think that stress is probably the number one thing that keeps people from being able to sleep effectively because they don't have good habits of self-regulation. A lot of us weren't taught how to regulate our nervous systems as kids, right? Our parents didn't know how to regulate themselves, so they didn't teach us how to regulate ourselves.
(18:03)
And if that's the case, you might find yourself regulating your nervous system with unhealthy coping mechanisms like drinking or smoking or eating lots of sugar or comfort foods and other unhealthy stress coping mechanisms that people pick up. So learning how to regulate your nervous system is a great way to manage your stress. Like we were talking about before in the previous episode, there's a lot of different strategies that you can use to regulate your nervous system from mindfulness to breathing exercises, to somatic exercises like tapping, talking to a therapist, journaling. All of these are really great ways to regulate your nervous system. If you don't have good, healthy coping mechanisms or ways to regulate your nervous system, that likely is going to affect your sleep and then also watch your nutrition, right? I am definitely not the kind of person that can fall asleep when I have an empty stomach.
(19:04)
If I haven't eaten within one or two hours before bed, I will have a really hard time sleeping and I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night. So that's something I know about my body and I need to make sure that I have something in my belly before I go to bed. But you also want to avoid eating things before bed that are going to keep you up, things that are going to cause gastric distress or upset your stomach. You want to avoid really heavy meals, caffeine, of course, like we already talked about, and alcohol too. Even though alcohol is a depressant and it slows your system down, it doesn't actually help you to get good rest. It actually keeps you from getting good rest. So having alcohol before bed, you may think that you're unwinding and you're relaxing, but you're not going to get good sleep with alcohol in your system.
(19:55)
So instead, you want to eat when it gets closer to bedtime, you want to eat lighter meals, and you also want to incorporate sleep promoting foods. Some foods will make you feel sleepier. Things like high protein, high protein, but lean protein, things like Turkey, dairy products, nuts, seeds. You can even do bananas. Stuff that's also going to keep you full for a longer period of time that has a moderate amount of fiber so that you're not going to wake up hungry. So these are all little tips that you can use to get better sleep, get better rest to improve your gains, right? Because it's just like we said before, it's like yin and yang. As hard as you work out in your workouts, as much as you stress your body, you have to balance that out with effective rest. And if you struggle with effective rest, you can use any of these little strategies that we talked about to deal with that.
(20:55)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you found this discussion helpful, and I'm curious to know what strategies you use to make sure that you are getting good, effective rest to maximize your gains. Leave those in the comments of this video if you're watching on YouTube. And don't forget that you can join me when I'm live on my Twitch channel by following me on Twitch. Just go to twitch.tv/Jaydigains and give me a follow to get notified whenever I go live. I usually go live on Tuesdays and Fridays in the fitness and health category to do my workout, answer fitness questions, and record a few episodes of the podcast. I'd love to see you there, and don't forget that you can find out more about me and the products and services that I offer by going to my website, Jaydigains.com. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure that you are eating your veggies, eating plenty of proteins, staying hydrated, and taking good care of yourself. I'll see you soon.
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Episode 58: Here’s Why You Can’t Stop Stress Eating & Drinking (And What to Do About It)
If you’ve ever found yourself reaching for something sweet when you’re stressed, tired, or just feeling off, you’re not alone. Sugar addiction is real—and it’s more common than most people realize. In this week’s episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I’m diving deep into why sugar is so addictive, how it impacts your body and mind, and what you can actually do to reduce your intake and feel more in control.
How to Break Free from Sugar Addiction and Take Control of Your Health
If you’ve ever found yourself reaching for something sweet when you’re stressed, tired, or just feeling off, you’re not alone. Sugar addiction is real—and it’s more common than most people realize. In this week’s episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I’m diving deep into why sugar is so addictive, how it impacts your body and mind, and what you can actually do to reduce your intake and feel more in control.
Why Refined Sugar Feels So Hard to Quit
Refined sugar isn’t just tasty—it’s engineered to be addictive. Food manufacturers know how to hit that bliss point: the perfect combo of sugar, salt, and fat that lights up the reward centers of your brain. That’s why you can polish off a whole sleeve of cookies and still crave more.
And it’s not just about flavor. Sugar can also become a go-to coping mechanism when we’re dealing with emotional stress, anxiety, or overwhelm. The spike in dopamine and quick energy boost can feel like a temporary solution—but it often leads to a crash, guilt, and more cravings.
The Connection Between Stress, Emotional Eating & the Nervous System
One of the key things I talked about in this episode is how dysregulation in the nervous system can fuel sugar cravings. When we’re in a chronic state of stress—whether from work, relationships, or internal pressure—our bodies seek comfort. That’s where sugar often comes in.
But there are better ways to support your nervous system.
Practical Tools to Curb Cravings Without Feeling Deprived
Here are a few strategies I use with clients (and myself!) to reduce sugar intake and build healthier habits:
Start with awareness, not judgment. Notice your triggers and patterns around sugar without shaming yourself. Awareness is the first step to change.
Incorporate mindfulness and somatic tools. Practices like meditation, deep breathing, or the butterfly hug can help calm your nervous system without reaching for food.
Prioritize balanced meals. When your meals have protein, fiber, and healthy fats, your blood sugar stays more stable—and cravings drop.
Explore emotional support. Working with a therapist trained in somatic therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you develop better coping tools for emotional regulation.
You're Not Broken—The System Is
If you’re struggling with sugar, it’s not a lack of willpower. It's often a mix of biological, emotional, and environmental factors. You can create a more balanced, empowered relationship with food—one that supports your goals and your nervous system.
Links:
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Jayd (00:00):
If you find that you tend to stress eat a lot or you have other unhealthy regulation coping mechanisms that you don't like and you want to change them, I really recommend starting to think about other ways that you can regulate your nervous system and really prioritize giving yourself a menu of things that you can choose from so that you're not always feeling like you have to choose or go for the food or go for the alcohol. Because the more that you give yourself these choices and the more often that you choose these other things, it makes it easier. It rewires your brain so that in the future you'll more often regulate with things that are healthy for you and aren't going to cause unwanted weight gain or other side effects like alcohol and refined sugars have on our bodies.
(01:00)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for over 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share with you some of the tips and tricks that I share with my personal training clients. In today's episode, we're going to talk about why it is so hard to stop eating sugary foods. I'm going to share with you a conversation that I had with my Twitch chat while I was live on my Twitch channel, Twitch tv slash JD gains. In addition to talking about why it is so hard for us to break up with sugary foods, I'm also going to give some tips for how you can reduce your intake of refined sugars. And before we get into the episode, if you are interested in learning more about how to eat healthy in a way that supports your fitness goals, make sure to check out my Healthy Diet Makeover book.
(01:45)
I've created a five-step process that I share with all of my personal training clients for cleaning up the diet, getting your calorie intake right and how to meal plan and meal prep for healthy eating. It's a pretty quick read and it's very simple, straight to the point guidance on cleaning up your diet and getting your diet on track. You can find the physical book on Amazon and order it there, or you can download the ebook from my website. I do also have a coaching program that goes along with this book that you can find more information for on my website. Just go to Jaydigains.com and scroll down to look at the coaching program options. Now, without further ado, let's get into the episode and talk about why it's so hard to stop eating sugary foods.
(02:38)
The thing about a lot of foods that have refined sugars in them or beverages that have refined sugars in them, they are engineered to be addictive. They're literally made to make you addicted to them, so having it just once or twice greatly increases the likelihood that you'll do it again pretty soon because food companies actually will test their products by putting people in MRI machines and then they will take a look at their brains when they eat a chip, and then based on the activity in their brain, if it's lighting up areas that say might get lit up by you getting a hit of cocaine or something, they will tweak the flavor so it lights up more of those reward centers, and that's how they make the foods more and more addictive. You have to completely stay away from sugary stuff or you'll easily eat too much.
(03:34)
I honestly think that I have to stay away from sugary foods too. I have a very addictive personality. I do tend to get addicted to video games pretty easily, and sugar sugary food or just like high sodium snack foods is a big one for me too, Cheez-Its just a sucker for cheesy, cheesy, salty snack foods, and when I'm stressed, I'm more susceptible to that. It hits those reward centers in your brain and gets your body to release dopamine, and if you're really, really stressed or you're not getting hits of dopamine from other more healthy sources, then it can be very easy for food to become this sole source of dopamine. And that's where a lot of people, especially people with A DHD tend to get stuck in the sugar addiction because we already tend to have low dopamine to begin with, and our systems get dysregulated more easily, so we're more susceptible to that kind of stuff.
(04:37)
You're still weak to beer, hard to stay away. Yeah. Alcohol's another one that some of my clients struggle with, and it's hard because alcohol's not just something that gives you a nice buzz. It's also for a lot of people a ritual, right? It's how they wind down after a stressful day at work. They have a couple glasses of wine or a couple beers with their partner, with their friends. It's a communal experience. It's a relaxing experience for a lot of people, and that's where you kind of get caught, which again, if it becomes so much of a way that you regulate yourself, you don't have other ways that you regulate your nervous system that are not eating or drinking, then you become very susceptible to getting addicted. So it's something you got to watch out for, and once again, you got to be really mindful of taking care of your system and approach your self-care as your nervous system is like a really complex computer.
(05:40)
It gets overheated, and if you have a DHD or autism, it gets overheated easily, so you need to have things that you do to cool it down or regulate yourself, and a lot of people just by default end up turning to food to regulate themselves That gets them to a calm baseline level. If that's your only way that you regulate yourself very easily, you could end up gaining unwanted weight or ending up with an addiction to sugar or alcohol or both. I think it's worth investing in some resources to learn how to regulate your nervous system, either by going to therapy, working with a somatic therapist, journaling, cultivate a nice little library in your brain of things that usually work to help calm your nervous system that's not eating or drinking something great. Ways to regulate your nervous system without eating or drinking something include mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing exercises.
(06:40)
This is why yoga is really great for a lot of people to bring them mental clarity and peace because yoga and breathing exercises that are part of yoga are all about focusing in the present moment, being mindful and present and paying attention to your body, paying attention to your breath, and focusing on what is happening right now so you can get out of your mind and out of your thinking about the future or stressing about the past, what's happening right now, and you focus on the sensations of your body while you're exercising or while you're doing breathing work. Just taking a moment to sit back and just focus on your breathing and take a few deep breaths is a great way to get into the present moment and can regulate your nervous system. But there's also some somatic exercises that come from EMDR therapy, which include tracking something with your eyes that goes left to right because bilateral stimulation of your brain where you go left, right, left, right, left, whether that's your eyeballs moving or you feel something you're doing taps left right, or you're hearing music that goes from your left ear to your right ear has a great effect on calming your mind and helping you when you're in a really dysregulated state.
(08:00)
So a really common somatic EMDR exercise for helping you to regulate your nervous system is called the butterfly hug. Basically, you take your hands across your shoulders like this, you're giving yourself a hug, and then you just tap side to side and you just try to focus on the feeling of that tap left, right, left, and you focus on the feeling of the taps, but there's all kinds of other ways that you can just tap left, right on your neck, on your shoulders, on your chest, and then exercise itself is a great way to regulate your nervous system. You don't have to go to the gym and just crush your body and stress yourself. Sometimes your workouts can just be, I need to regulate my nervous system. I just need to get some blood flowing and I need to do something that's not stressful to my system.
(08:50)
But just movement, moving your body and paying attention, the movement of your body is another really great way to regulate your nervous system. If you find that you tend to stress eat a lot or you have other unhealthy regulation, coping mechanisms that you don't like and you want to change them, I really recommend starting to think about other ways that you can regulate your nervous system and really prioritize giving yourself kind of a menu of things that you can choose from so that you're not always feeling like you have to choose or go for the food or go for the alcohol, because the more that you give yourself these choices and the more often that you choose these other things, it makes it easier. It rewires your brain so that in the future you'll more often regulate with things that are healthy for you and aren't going to cause unwanted weight gain or other side effects like alcohol and refined sugars have on our bodies.
(09:50)
But getting with a therapist, especially someone who works with Somatic Therapy Strategies, EMDR is a great example. Cognitive behavioral therapy also has a lot of physical exercises, mindfulness, right? Mindfulness. These are all great forms of therapy that can help you to develop a better habit of regulating your nervous system, and it's worth doing, I think, because if you are not really good at regulating your nervous system, it's likely that there are other parts of your life that are suffering in addition to just, oh, I'm eating a lot more than I would like, or I'm drinking a lot more than I would like. You probably have relationships in your life that are suffering because of your poor regulation, right? There's probably boundaries that you need to set in your life towards work or in other relationships that you just haven't been regulated enough to be able to set those boundaries, right?
(10:49)
So I think it's worth doing for sure, but if you are interested in working with a therapist to learn how to regulate your nervous system better, you could just go to psychology, what is it? Psychology today.org. If you have health insurance, you probably can get a lot of your therapy covered through your insurance, so go log into whatever your portal is for your insurance, and usually they'll provide lists of providers that take their insurance, and there's also a lot of free resources online as well. There's also courses that a lot of therapists have put together and they sell. Basically, this is a course on mindfulness, or this is a course on EMDR, so there are so many options out there for you, so don't feel like you're trapped in. This is going to be like this forever. It does take some time to learn new ways to regulate yourself, but it's definitely worth it, and there's free resources out there, and there's also people who professionally you can work with to learn new ways of regulating your nervous system.
(12:04)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you're interested in learning about me and the services and products that I offer, head to my website, Jaydigains.com, and don't forget to order your copy of the Healthy Diet Makeover book from my website or from Amazon. The links for that are in the show notes of this episode and in the video description, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel if you're watching on YouTube so that you always get the latest videos. If you're listening to the episode, make sure to follow the show so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure to eat your veggies, eat your protein, stay hydrated, and take good care of yourself. I'll see you next time.
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Sign up to get notified whenever new episodes drop. Opt in for more tips on training, fat loss, and nutrition by filling out the form below:
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Episode 57: 9 Minimalist Meal Prep Strategies
Do you struggle to eat healthy when life gets hectic? In this episode of the Coaching Corner podcast, I share my top minimalist meal prep strategies to help you stay on track with your nutrition—even during your busiest weeks.
As a personal trainer, I know how overwhelming traditional meal prep can be. That’s why I focus on simple, time-saving tips using grocery store staples like rotisserie chicken, salad kits, microwavable grains, steamable veggies, canned beans, tuna packets, and frozen meals. I also share high-protein snack ideas like Greek yogurt, jerky, protein bars, and hard-boiled eggs that keep you fueled on the go.
Plus, I cover how to balance convenience with fresh foods, stay mindful of sodium intake, and still build meals that support your goals—whether it’s fat loss, muscle gain, or just feeling better overall.
Do you struggle to eat healthy when life gets hectic? In this episode of the Coaching Corner podcast, I share my top minimalist meal prep strategies to help you stay on track with your nutrition—even during your busiest weeks.
As a personal trainer, I know how overwhelming traditional meal prep can be. That’s why I focus on simple, time-saving tips using grocery store staples like rotisserie chicken, salad kits, microwavable grains, steamable veggies, canned beans, tuna packets, and frozen meals. I also share high-protein snack ideas like Greek yogurt, jerky, protein bars, and hard-boiled eggs that keep you fueled on the go.
Plus, I cover how to balance convenience with fresh foods, stay mindful of sodium intake, and still build meals that support your goals—whether it’s fat loss, muscle gain, or just feeling better overall.
👉 In this episode, you’ll learn:
9 minimalist meal prep tips that work
My favorite healthy grocery store shortcuts
Quick snack ideas that don’t require cooking
How to save time without sacrificing nutrition
A simple mindset shift to make meal prep sustainable
🎯 Whether you’re a busy professional, a parent, or just someone trying to eat better without the stress, this episode is packed with practical nutrition hacks you can start using today.
📘 Want more help with your diet? Grab my Healthy Diet Makeover Handbook Paperback or Ebook
🎙️ Subscribe to Coaching Corner for weekly episodes on fitness, fat loss, nutrition, and mindset.
#MealPrep #NutritionTips #HealthyEating #FitnessPodcast #MinimalistMealPrep #JaydHarrison #BusyLifestyle #MealPrepHacks #CoachingCorner
If you’re trying to get leaner without losing strength, or just want to train smarter during a fat loss phase, this episode is for you.
Links:
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Jayd (00:00):
A lot of grocery stores in their deli section have ready to eat, ready to go, meals and snacks. So take a look at those sections of your grocery store. That's another simple, very, very fast way to meal prep if you don't have time to fully cook. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years and I created this podcast so I can share with you some of the tips and tricks that I share with my personal training clients. In today's episode, I'm going to share a couple of tips for minimalist meal prep. We all have weeks where we are just too busy or too tired to go through the process of planning and cooking our meals for the week, and when that happens, it can be very easy to get off track on our diet plans.
(00:55)
So what I'm sharing in this episode are a couple of really fast and healthy ways that you can still meet your macros with spending minimal time in the kitchen. Now, if you like the tips and tricks that I share in this episode, make sure to check out my Healthy Diet Makeover book, which you can buy off Amazon or you can download the ebook from my website In my Healthy Diet Makeover book, I've created a five-step process for cleaning up your diet, starting with how to put healthy food on your plate at every meal, and I'll also show you how to figure out how many calories you should be eating and how to split those calories up between your macronutrients like protein, carbohydrates, and fats. This book also comes with a bunch of recipes that you can try as well as a seven day example meal plan. I'll show you how to meal plan and how to meal prep as well. There's other tips in this book as well on how to eat healthy on a budget, how to eat healthy while traveling, et cetera. So make sure to pick up a copy of the book. You can find a link for that in the video description below if you're watching on YouTube and if you're listening to this podcast, you can find links for the book in the show notes. Now without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:12)
I had a client a couple weeks ago where she just had sort of a bad mental health weekend and the weekend is when she usually does her meal prep, and then she was really worried about getting off track that week when I saw her on Monday and I was like, well, why don't you just get the stuff that's like ready to eat right from the grocery store? So you have to do very minimal stuff. We were brainstorming some of the things that she could do to make sure that she was hitting her macros and hitting her calories so she could continue to work out as hard as she needed to reach her goals. She's got a wedding coming up, so these are some of my tips. I have nine tips for simple minimalist things that you can do to make sure that you're sticking to your diet plan even if you just don't have time to meal prep or maybe you your window for meal prep.
(03:00)
My number one tip that I recommend people if you're not vegan or vegetarian is to just grab a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store because the rotisserie chickens from the grocery store are number one guaranteed to be tasty. They're well cooked right, and they are usually cooked really with the right amount of seasoning and everything. You can eat them right out of the box. You could just literally just buy one and eat it depending on what your protein and your calorie goals are and how much you have to eat at a meal, you might have to eat half a chicken, right? If you have the funds for it and you want to go a little step further, then go to a Peruvian restaurant. They'll also give you basically a whole, it's like brick grilled chicken. Now you can eat it whole right as it is, or you can very quickly take that and turn it into some chicken salad or you can add it as a topping to a sandwich.
(03:59)
You can make a wrap out of it. You can turn it into some quick tacos. It's very easy to make multiple things using a rotisserie chicken or a Peruvian chicken, and a lot of times the Peruvian restaurants will give you an option, half a chicken, a whole chicken or whatnot. So this is something very, very easy, very minimalist. You literally could just keep it in your fridge and then just cut off a few pieces as you go so you don't have to worry about cooking it yourself. Now, if you are in a calorie deficit, if you're watching your calories when you're using the rotisserie chicken, you can easily reduce the calorie intake of that chicken by just not eating the skin because rotisserie chicken are usually cooked with the skin on. Just peel the skin off and eat just the meat and then be careful about what sauces you're using.
(04:54)
But you can easily make a pretty low calorie high protein snack or full meal using rotisserie chicken. It lasts at least three days in the fridge. You could get a couple of them or you could get one every couple of days if you have a particular week where you're not going to be able to cook, just get a rotisserie chicken at the beginning of the week and then another one midway through the week. Okay? Another thing number two is pre-washed salad kits. You can get these from the grocery store and these are great. You can pack 'em right into your lunchbox. You can eat them right out of the package. They usually contain a mixture of different vegetables. You can also find ones that have a variety of different proteins like boiled eggs or chicken Turkey or ham, and they have other ingredients too. So this is another really easy you can grab and go right from the grocery store to make sure that you're getting some fiber and some vegetables in your diet even if you don't have time to meal prep.
(05:56)
However, I also have to say it is also super, super fast to just build your own salads for meal prep. This is something that I do a lot of times when I have those weeks where I'm just like, I cannot be bothered. I'll just buy a bunch of kale or spinach and then whatever other ingredients because with just a couple of different vegetables, like a bag of greens and then some other vegetables, depending on what kind of salad you're building, you can build out seven different meals using all of those things, mixing and matching the different proteins and toppings that you use. So that's another simple, very, very fast way to meal prep if you don't have time to fully cook. And you could use the rotisserie chicken for part of the protein, boiling some eggs. You can also buy boiled eggs from the grocery store.
(06:48)
A lot of grocery stores in their deli section have ready to eat, ready to go meals and snacks, so take a look at those sections of your grocery store. That's where you'll often find the pre-washed salad kits as well. If not there, you'll also find them in the vegetable section. Number three, another thing that can be super helpful if you don't have a lot of time to cook is microwavable grains fellow twitch streamer and bodybuilder slash powerlifter cure the hermit or hermit earnest on other social media. One thing that his community used to give him a hard time about was his microwavable rice. He'd get, was it Uncle Ben's? Yeah, he'd get packs of Uncle Ben's rice, microwave them, and then have that with some tuna or some other packaged chicken or something for a quick post-workout meal, and his community is to give him a hard time for using the microwaveable rice, but it's legitimate and that's what you got to do what you got to do.
(07:50)
There's nothing wrong with having, honestly, if it's the difference between you not eating at all versus eating some microwavable grains, freaking get the microwaveable grains. So this is super, super simple way to get in some healthy grains without having to go through the whole process of cleaning your rice and then boiling it and then steaming it, et cetera, et cetera. You can skip all of that and just get some little packets and you can go from any grocery store. Number four, precut veggies and steam bags. Another great way to get in your veggies with very minimal cooking time. Just go to the frozen food section of your grocery store and you'll find steam bags all over the place. Some of them have different sauces that they can add to give some different flavorings. My colleague and coach really likes, it's like a cauliflower rice that has this cheesy sauce and he'll get two of those and microwave two of those and have those for lunch with some protein.
(08:55)
Very fast, simple, pretty good tasting, at least that's what he tells me. You'll find a lot of different microwaveable and steam bags like that with flavoring or without flavoring, and if you go to the produce section, a lot of times you'll find pre-cut veggies that are ready to eat right out of the box, and sometimes they'll even come with a little bit of ranch dressing or some hummus or something. That's another really simple way to make sure that you are getting some veggies in, even if you haven't meal prepped. You can also do the same thing if you diet allows for deli meats. You can also find party trays that have deli meats and cheese and hummus, and sometimes there's a mixture of veggies and veggies and deli meats and et cetera, so those are some good options as well. Number five, if you are up for just a little bit of cooking, boil some eggs.
(09:53)
When I have a minimal prep week, one of the first things I do is pop between six and 10 eggs into a sauce pan, boil them, and then I don't even peel them. Once they are cooked, I stick them in the fridge and some ice water and then I use them as I go throughout the week. I'll make egg salad or I'll use them as toppings on a wrap or for a salad, frozen Turkey burgers or veggie patties, so frozen foods like that that you can keep in your freezer and then just pop them in the microwave when you're ready to eat. Still a little bit of cooking, still a little bit of prep. You get something that's nice and warm, but you don't really have to make the patties right, they're already ready to go. Also, pre-cooked chicken sausage or summer sausage again, like deli meats, that kind of a thing.
(10:48)
If your diet allows, just keep in mind when it comes to sausage and deli meats, you got to be mindful of the amount of sodium that's in it. If you are trying to eat a low sodium diet or if you're watching your blood pressure, this might not be the best option for you. And number two, sausage a lot of times has a lot higher fat content, especially saturated fat, so if you're watching your saturated fats, you want to be careful about sausage, but that is another option as well. Number six, a couple of shelf shelf stable staples that you might want to just keep in your kitchen at all times for when you have a week like this when you don't have time to cook are things like canned beans. These are super easy to just warm up, add salt, pepper, and maybe a little bit of seasoning.
(11:40)
You could eat them exactly like that or you could add them to salads, add them to protein bowls, et cetera. They're a really great source of dietary fiber and protein. I mean, honestly, you could live off of beans because they are a complete food. They have carbohydrates, healthy fats, and also protein, so I always recommend keeping canned beans in your pantry at all times and then just use them on weeks when you don't have time to cook. Tuna and salmon packets are also a really great staple to keep in your pantry. Another thing that you can very easily whip together, add onto a sandwich or add onto a salad or make tuna salad with crackers. Very quick, easy, high protein and healthy fat food. You want to also keep some soup or chili in your pantry or in your freezer too. Sometimes what I'll do is make a soup or a chili like a big batch of it, like a family size batch of it that has between six and eight servings, and then I will freeze the soup and keep it in my freezer For weeks like this, when I don't have time to meal prep or I don't have time to do a whole meal prep, I can always grab those frozen meals that I've created for myself from a couple of weeks before.
(13:06)
There are a lot of companies who make pretty healthy frozen meal options. The only thing that you have to watch out for these is sometimes they don't have enough calories. If you look at the nutrition on the box, it is just 310 calories. A lot of them are like 310 calories, 400 calories, and that is for most people, not really enough calories for an actual meal, but if you have two of them, it's full of vegetables, it's full of, usually they don't have as much protein as you need to, but if you eat two or one and a half, then you can probably get your protein intake. So there's a lot of good options for frozen meals that you should probably keep stocked in your freezer just in case. And if you have a week where you haven't meal prepped or you don't have time, you can always just go to the grocery store, grab a couple of those and just have them in your freezer.
(13:55)
Just keep in mind when it comes to these pre-made frozen meals, a lot of times they do have a lot of sodium in them, so again, if you're watching your blood pressure, you want to be mindful of how much sodium is in these frozen foods. The same thing when it comes to the shelf stable canned foods as well. Those canned foods are going to have a lot more sodium in them too, so it just makes sure that you're balancing that out with drinking plenty of water to help flush your system, but you want to balance out these shelf stable and frozen foods with fresh foods, so that's why I first recommended the rotisserie chicken and the precut veggies, that kind of thing. I also have a couple of tips for snacks, for snack ideas if you want to maximize your protein. Some snacks that you should keep in your kitchen are Greek yogurt cups.
(14:46)
A lot of them have at least 12 grams of protein. Oikos has this product that's called Ocos Pro, and it's like 20 grams of protein for a small half a cup of yogurt. It's good to have those and keep those in your fridge very quick, easy 20 grams of protein right there, and it's not very high calorie, either string cheese or those cheese rounds. Just make sure that if you are watching your calories go for skim or low fat. Again, keeping hard boiled eggs in your refrigerator is a good choice for snacks, you could just pop on some salt and some pepper, maybe some a drop of vinegar, and you can easily have a little snack that's 12 grams of protein, two eggs, right? Keeping jerky like beef jerky in your pantry is a great way to get a protein dense snack that is fast.
(15:39)
You don't have to cook it and it's ready to go right out of the package or meat sticks so you can get Turkey beef jerky. You can also find plant-based jerky as well that's made with lentils or soy roasted at a mame or chickpeas. You can get them in these little snack packs, these little pouches, keep those in your pantry. Easy way to get a good balance of carbohydrates, fats and protein, and then protein bars and shakes. Of course, many bodybuilders and power lifters. It's kind of a staple of our kitchens. We always have protein shakes or protein powder and some protein bars somewhere, so these are some fast protein dense snacks. If you are looking for something that's like more like fresh and fruity, you could find some pre-sliced apple packs, unsweetened applesauce cups, another really good choice for something sweet and fresh. And now number nine.
(16:36)
I'll be honest on the weeks that I don't have a lot of time to meal prep and I am just kind of flying by the seat of my pants, I'm more likely to go for stuff that is sweet. I'm more likely to eat things that are sweet and desserty. I'm more likely to crave that, and if I haven't meal prepped, it's likely because I'm busy and I'm stressed, so I know going into it that I'm probably going to want something sweet. So if I'm going to the grocery store to pick up some stuff that's going to be quick meal prep. I'm also going to grab some stuff that's a pretty nice little sweet treat that's going to go towards my macros, so you can get those yaso frozen Greek yogurt bars. Those are so yummy. If you like ice cream or if you like frozen yogurt, that kind of thing.
(17:24)
Those are really yummy. Protein bars are a really good, they can just sometimes scratch that itch for something sweet, especially if you like chocolate, and I do so keeping chocolate protein bars and using them as sort of like a dessert when I'm feeling like I want something sweet. It's a good way to satisfy that when I'm stressed, but also add to my protein for the day. You can also find a lot of protein snacks like protein cups, premier Protein, and Cozy Shack simply, well, they make protein pudding. You can also find high protein ice creams like Halo Top. These are all good options for if you have a sweet tooth and you want to satisfy that sweet tooth and also have it go towards your macros and calories for the day. Those are my nine tips for how to tackle if you haven't had time to meal prep or if you don't have time to meal prep and you want to still eat in a way that's going towards your goals and in alignment with your goals. Now I'm curious to see what are the things that you guys do when you have a week where you don't have time to meal prep? When you don't have time to cook, what do you do in order to stick to your diet plan? If you're watching this on YouTube, leave those in the comments below this YouTube video. I really want to hear what your tips and tricks are.
(18:50)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you are interested in working with me or if you're interested in the products and services that I offer, head to my website, Jaydigains.com. I am taking on online personal training clients right now for a variety of my programs, so make sure that you check out those options. You can also hang out with me while I'm live on my Twitch channel. That's Twitch tv slash Jaydigains, so make sure to follow me there so that you can join me in the live chat while I'm doing my workouts and doing the podcast. And that's it for this episode. I'll see you in the next one. In the meantime, make sure that you eat your veggies, eat your protein, stay hydrated, and take good care of your body, and I'll see you next time. Take care.
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Episode 56: 9 Strategies to Speed Up Fat Loss Through Resistance Training
In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I’m breaking down why resistance training should be your top priority during a fat loss phase—not just cardio. Cardio definitely has its place, but relying on it too much can lead to muscle breakdown and a slower metabolism over time. To help you avoid that, I’m sharing 9 powerful strategies to make your resistance training more effective so you can burn fat, keep your muscle, and get long-term results.
In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I’m breaking down why resistance training should be your top priority during a fat loss phase—not just cardio.
Cardio definitely has its place, but relying on it too much can lead to muscle breakdown and a slower metabolism over time. To help you avoid that, I’m sharing 9 powerful strategies to make your resistance training more effective so you can burn fat, keep your muscle, and get long-term results.
🔥 Here’s what I cover:
Why cardio alone isn’t enough for sustainable fat loss
How lifting weights supports your metabolism and muscle retention
My 9 go-to training tips for fat loss:
Train consistently (3–4x/week)
Focus on compound movements
Use higher reps with moderate weights
Keep intensity high (train smart, not sloppy)
Choose weights that challenge you
Add metabolic finishers
Increase your daily movement (NEAT)
Prioritize recovery and sleep
Get your nutrition right—think protein, fiber, and a slight calorie deficit
If you’re trying to get leaner without losing strength, or just want to train smarter during a fat loss phase, this episode is for you.
Links:
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Jayd (00:00):
So when you are in a fat loss phase, it's important that you're combating that breakdown of muscle tissue. That is a natural part of being in a calorie deficit because remember, your body's going to break down fat and muscle to make up for energy that you're not getting through food, and if all you're doing is cardio and moving your body and burning lots of calories through cardiovascular exercise, then that breakdown of your muscle tissue is going to happen a lot faster. Now you can combat this breakdown of muscle tissue by incorporating resistance training regularly into your weekly training routine.
(00:46)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. My name's Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share some of the tips and tricks that I teach my personal training clients. In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to tweak your resistance training to support your fat loss. Now, when people think about fat loss, they often envision a training routine that includes endless hours of cardio. But resistance training is what I like to call the secret magic bullet to sustainable fat loss. If you are looking to achieve a toned physique, meaning you have some muscle definition and a lean body composition, you cannot neglect doing resistance training at least two times a week. There are some ways that you can tweak your resistance training to make it even more effective at helping you to burn fat and change your body composition.
(01:41)
Now, before we get into this episode, make sure to like this video if you're following on YouTube and subscribe to the channels so you always get the latest episodes and other videos that I dropped throughout the week. If you're listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the channel so that you always get the latest episodes delivered to your device. If you are interested in working with me as your coach, I am taking on clients to my workout program, just go to my website, gd gaines.com or check the links in the show notes or the description of this video. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:19)
So many people believe that what they need to do to optimize their workout program for fat loss is to do lots of high intensity cardio to burn a lot of calories in each workout. The problem with this approach though is that it can very quickly lead to burnout or even injury even for intermediate and advanced exercises. Experts don't recommend doing this type of training more than two or three times a week. Another problem with this is that the amount of calories that your body burns in high intensity cardio is going to naturally decline over time. Your body is an adaptation machine. It is made to make movements that you do frequently automated so you save more energy on them because your body's built for the wild and in the wild. If you continue to burn a lot of calories more than what you are eating, eventually you're going to run out of your fat stores, which are your energy stores, and you could die.
(03:17)
So your body tries to make activities that are very calorie expensive, more efficient over time so you don't burn as many calories as your body adapts. When this happens, then in order to keep your body continuing to burn the same number of calories, you have to do more by increasing the amount of time that you're doing your cardio or increasing the number of times you do that type of training a week. Now there's only so much exercise you can do in the day before you start to experience a breakdown in your body or in your motivation. Another thing that can happen with this approach is loss of muscle mass. When you're doing really high intensity cardio for extended periods of time frequently throughout the week, your body is not going to be able to keep up with the repairs that are necessary to sustain that type of activity for long.
(04:09)
In order to make up for the energy that you're not getting through your food, you're likely going to see a breakdown of the existing muscle tissue that you have Now as that muscle tissue declines, so will the number of calories that your body burns in that exercise and overall in your everyday life. So when you are in a fat loss phase, it's important that you're combating that breakdown of muscle tissue. That is a natural part of being in a calorie deficit because remember, your body's going to break down fat and muscle to make up for energy that you're not getting through food. And if all you're doing is cardio and moving your body and burning lots of calories through cardiovascular exercise, then that breakdown of your muscle tissue is going to happen a lot faster. Now, you can combat this breakdown of muscle tissue by incorporating resistance training regularly into your weekly training routine, but there are some ways that you can go even further by making your resistance training further support your fat loss by increasing the number of calories that your body spends every day without necessarily having to do more and more cardio.
(05:20)
So let's take a look at nine different ways that you can optimize your resistance training to keep your muscle mass from reducing and to increase your calorie burn over time. And the number one way to optimize your resistance training for fat loss is to train frequently at least three to four times per week. When it comes to fat loss, consistency is key. Working out more frequently will help to increase the total calorie burn of your body on a day-to-day basis, and working out for three to four times a week will give you the amount of time that you need to hit all of the major muscle groups. So for example, you could do a three day workout routine that's a total body split where you're working upper body, lower body and core every day that you train. Or you could try a push pull leg split and upper body, lower body, total body split.
(06:08)
All of these are great options for three day training programs. For a four day split, you could try alternating between upper body and lower body days. A lot of my clients really like this format because upper body days are a lot easier to recover from than lower body days, so they're not feeling quite as tired after every gym session as they would if they were doing total body. And when you're in a fat loss phase and a low calorie intake, you're likely going to be tired. So it is nice to have some days of your resistance training program that are going to be easier on your energy levels and easier to recover from. You could also do something like a body part split. We alternate between arms, chest, back, legs, et cetera. There are many ways that you could split up your workouts, but I do recommend that you try to stick to at least three to four times a week, and you can even do shorter sessions the more often that you're training, so you're not having to spend quite so much time in the gym as you get tired or and tireder during your fat loss phase.
(07:06)
Now, another way that you can optimize your resistance training for fat loss is to prioritize compound movements. These are movements that involve multiple joints working in action at the same time. The classic examples of compound movements are things like squats, deadlifts, pull-ups, press exercises like bench press or pushups. But variations of these types of exercises are also really great different types of lunges and the variety of deadlift styles. When you get multiple joints moving at the same time, this means that you're getting more activation and more muscles. The more muscles that are involved and your resistance training, the more calories you're burning during that workout. But it's not just about how many calories you're burning in your workout, it's also about how much muscle growth are you stimulating within that workout because when you recover from your workout and your muscles grow, the more muscle that you can build, the more your total calorie burn is going to increase on a day-to-day basis.
(08:09)
So both in and outside of the gym, we really want to make sure that we're boosting that calorie burn by stimulating the muscles. Compound movements are also super efficient. If you don't have a whole lot of time to spend in the gym, especially if you're feeling really tired, doing a few compound movements that hit multiple muscles at the same time could mean that you don't have to do quite as many exercises and spend less time in the gym. Also, many of the compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, and lunges involve the big muscles in your body. Big muscles burn a lot more calories than your smaller muscles in your upper body, so that also is going to increase the calorie burn from in the workout itself and also the recovery afterward. Now, it's important for a number of to do your compound lifts toward the beginning of your workout.
(08:58)
At the beginning of the workout, you're going to have a lot more energy than what you will have towards the end of the workout. I recommend doing your compound lifts or compound exercises at the beginning after your warmup and your priming, and then save more isolation based exercises like bicep curls to be at the end of your workout when you have less energy. Now, number three. Another way that you can optimize your resistance training for fat loss is to use a higher number of reps in each set using less weight and higher reps. Increasing the total volume of your training is going to go a lot further for you than doing really heavy lifts. For a small number of reps, this is going to do a number of things. Number one, more repetitions means more time under tension for your muscles. The longer that your muscles are under tension and having to work, the longer they're going to have to be spending calories.
(09:54)
So within the workout, high rep sets are going to by definition, burn more calories than low rep sets. High rep sets are also going to get your heart rate up, especially if you're training within that 10 to 20 repetitions per set range and with your heart rate elevated, that is going to boost your fat loss. Higher repetition sets also boost your post-exercise calorie burn so your body will burn more calories for longer even after you stop working out. It's also generally safer on the joints to use less weight and do more repetitions, which is very important, especially when you're in a calorie deficit. Being in a calorie deficit means that your body is going to not be able to recover as well from your workouts as when you are in a maintenance phase or if you are in a bulk. This means you're more at risk of getting injured.
(10:45)
But when you're using less weight and doing a higher number of repetitions, you greatly reduce the likelihood of getting injured from your exercise. And of course, higher volume training also is the best way to increase muscle growth and hypertrophy, which will one, combat the loss of muscle from being in a calorie deficit and will also boost the amount of lean muscle tissue in your body, which will in turn increase your daily calorie burn. So when we talk about higher volume training for your resistance training, we want to be shooting for sets with reps of between eight and 15 reps per set. Especially on your compound lifts, you want to keep it within that range. But on your isolation exercises like bicep curls, tricep, kickbacks, leg extensions, you could do as many as 20 repetitions per set. Just keep in mind, the longer that your muscles are burning, the better.
(11:37)
We want to approach muscle failure. That point where your muscles completely give out, you don't necessarily need to go all the way to muscle failure, but stopping just short of it is a great way to ensure that you're getting a maximum calorie burn within the workout, that you are stimulating muscle growth to combat the loss of muscle tissue, and that you're also going to be increasing the amount of muscle in your body, which will increase your total calorie burn on a daily basis, even on those days that you're not working out. Now, number four, another way to optimize your resistance training for fat loss is to increase the training intensity and my training intensity. What I mean is that your workouts should be challenging for your overall total body system. Not only do we want to get the muscles burning, but we want your total system to be challenged.
(12:23)
We want your heart rate to feel like it's getting spiked at the end of every set, and we want you to go into each successive set, not feeling quite as recovered as you did with the previous sets. Now, great ways to do this is to decrease the amount of time that you rest between your sets. Generally speaking, when my clients are in a fat loss phase, I like them to rest between 30 and 60 seconds. This ensures that going into set 2, 3, 4, et cetera. Their muscles are not quite recovered and they're going to get that burn happening sooner. Another great way to increase intensity is to incorporate circuit training or super sets. Super sets are when you alternate between two or more exercises that usually hit the same muscle group. So for example, you might do a set of squats followed by a set of lunges.
(13:10)
Circuit training is when you alternate between a variety of exercises that usually hit multiple different muscle groups, so you might do some squats, and then you might do pushups followed by lunges, followed by pull downs or pull-ups. This is a great way to keep you moving, so your body is spending minimal time at rest, which would increase your calorie burn within the course of the workout. You can also use training techniques like drop sets or practicing myo reps to help yourself push past your limits of fatigue. Number five, another way to make sure that your resistance training is optimal for fat loss is to make sure you're using the right weight during your sets. The weight that you use in an exercise should make the exercise feel challenging within eight to 12 reps or whatever the recommended rep range is for your program. The goal is to get the target muscles burning while maintaining proper technique through the entire set.
(14:04)
And of course, you want to gradually increase the number of reps you do or the amount of weight that you use over time. Whenever you repeat an exercise from one week to the other, you should be adding something to increase the challenge. And we do have an entire episode on how to progressively overload your muscles and your resistance training, which I highly recommend you check out to get more information on how to progress your resistance training to make it more challenging over time. You can use any of the suggestions in that episode to make your resistance training more intense. Now, number six. Another great way to optimize your resistance training for fat loss is to add what are called metabolic finishers. Now, these are exercises that you do after the main portion of your resistance training workout. The goal here is to increase your heart rate, get it up, and also focus on getting your muscles burning.
(14:55)
A great example of this is a 10 minute Im om, which stands for every minute on the minute. So every minute right on the dot, you start a set of an exercise like kettlebell swings or burpees before resting until the next minute hits. Doing that for 10 minutes is a great way to get your heart rate up and get your muscles burning. You could also do five rounds of 30 seconds of kettlebell swings, battle ropes, or sled pushes. You could also do five to 10:00 AM wrap circuits. This would be a circuit of a handful of exercises where you do as many reps as possible in each exercise for between five and 10 minutes. Number seven, another way that you can optimize your training program for fat loss is to incorporate neat, which stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So anytime that your body is moving, even when you're not necessarily exercising or working out, your body is burning more calories.
(15:56)
So lots of activities that of daily living can burn more calories. I suggest setting a daily activity goal for yourself when you're in a fat loss phase, walking more is a great way to get your body burning more calories. I like to shoot for between 8,000 and 12,000 steps a day. You can use your smartphone or wear an activity tracker device to track the number of steps that you take every day, and also you can track your heart rate throughout the day as well. I recommend also taking the stairs instead of the elevator. And if you have a sedentary job, you could stand more pace around or take walking meetings. And if you have a phone call that you need to do, go for a walk and walk and talk at the same time. And number eight, another thing that you should do is prioritize your recovery.
(16:40)
Remember, we do not build any muscle while we're actually in the gym working out. The muscle building happens after the workout, when you're at rest, when you're sleeping, if you have eaten properly, your body will take the food that you eat and it will turn it into muscle to combat that muscle loss and it will burn fat. So it's very important that you're prioritizing getting good effective rest. Aim for sleeping between seven and eight hours a night at least. It's also important to manage your stress because the more stressed you are, the harder it is going to be for you to get effective sleep. So manage your stress through different practices like mindfulness, meditation, journaling, talking with a therapist or trusted friend. It's also important that you're taking your rest days to give your body time to recuperate and repair the damaged tissue that happens normally through the course of training effectively.
(17:34)
And finally, number nine, it's super important that while you're in a fat loss phase and working out to build muscle and combat muscle loss, you need to dial in your nutrition. It's so important that you're giving your body enough protein and the right amount of calories to prioritize building muscle and burning fat. A good rule of thumb to shoot for is one gram of protein per pound of lean muscle tissue. And you may even want to do more when you're in a fat loss phase to ensure that you're getting as much protein as you need to build. Muscle protein is also pretty satiating and can help to reduce cravings. So a high protein diet is going to help a lot. It's also important that you're eating enough fiber. Dietary fiber helps to make you feel more full at the end of a meal or a snack, which will reduce your cravings.
(18:24)
And high fiber foods like vegetables, whole grains, fruits, these are all pretty satiating foods that are pretty low in calorie as well. And again, you want to prioritize whole unprocessed foods over packaged foods like crackers, cookies, chips, et cetera. Packaged foods are more likely to have added sugars or fat and other things like preservatives and salt that will increase your inflammation, increase your cravings as well, and just make it harder for you to achieve your fat loss and weight loss goals. And remember that for fat loss, you do need to maintain a calorie deficit. We need your body burning more calories than what you're eating. So a pretty modest calorie deficit of 200 to 500 calories below your maintenance level of calories is enough for you to achieve a nice sustainable fat loss at a rate that is going to minimize the amount of muscle that you lose.
(19:20)
Especially if you're doing resistance training. The steeper that you go in your calorie deficit, the more likely it is that a lot of your weight loss is going to come from muscle tissue. So if you're in a steep calorie deficit of like a thousand calories or more, just know that that is going to come at the cost of your lean muscle tissue, and as your lean muscle tissue goes down, so will your daily calorie burn. So I recommend sticking to that 200 to 500 calorie deficit a day if you want to retain muscle and improve your body composition while burning fat. So there you have it. Nine ways that you can optimize your resistance training or fat loss.
(20:02)
Thank you so much for watching this episode. I hope that you found it helpful. I'm curious to know what things you're using to optimize your training for fat loss. Leave those in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube. And don't forget that you can connect with me while I'm live on my Twitch channel. Just go to Twitch.tv/Jaydigains. Make sure to subscribe to this channel if you're watching on YouTube and to follow the channel. If you are listening to this podcast, again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 55: 7 Ways to Progress Your Resistance Training and Get Stronger
If you want to get stronger, build muscle, or improve your overall fitness, one principle is essential: progressive overload. It’s the key to continually making gains and ensuring your workouts remain effective. Without it, your progress will eventually stall, leaving you frustrated and stuck in a plateau.
In this post, we’ll break down what progressive overload is, why it matters, and how to apply it to your resistance training for long-term results.
What Is Progressive Overload?
Progressive overload is the gradual increase of stress placed on your muscles over time. Your body is highly adaptive—if you consistently challenge it, it will grow stronger and more resilient. However, if you don’t push your limits, your body will maintain the status quo, and your progress will stagnate.
The key is to make small, intentional increases in difficulty to keep stimulating muscle growth, strength gains, and endurance improvements.
Why Is Progressive Overload Important?
Prevents Plateaus – Without increasing the challenge, your body will adapt, and progress will slow down.
Builds Strength and Muscle – Muscle growth (hypertrophy) occurs when your muscles are consistently pushed beyond their current capacity.
Improves Performance – Whether you’re lifting for sport, functional strength, or general fitness, progressive overload ensures continued improvement.
Supports Fat Loss – Gaining muscle increases your metabolism, making it easier to maintain or lose weight.
Keeps Workouts Engaging – Seeing measurable progress can keep you motivated and invested in your training.
How to Apply Progressive Overload
There are multiple ways to implement progressive overload in your training. Here are some of the most effective methods:
1. Increase Repetitions or Sets
If adding weight isn’t an option, try increasing the number of reps or sets. For example, if you’re doing 8 reps of squats, aim for 9 or 10 in your next session.
2. Increase Time Under Tension
Slowing down the eccentric (lowering) phase of an exercise can increase muscle activation and growth. For example, lowering a squat over 3-4 seconds instead of dropping quickly increases the challenge.
3. Increase the Weight
The simplest method is to add more weight to your exercises. A good rule of thumb is to increase weight by about 2.5–5% for upper body movements and 5–10% for lower body movements when you can complete all your sets with good form.
4. Increase Training Volume
Volume refers to the total workload (sets × reps × weight). Gradually increasing this over time can lead to consistent gains.
5. Reduce Rest Time
Shortening your rest periods forces your muscles to recover faster, improving muscular endurance and work capacity.
6. Improve Exercise Form
Quality movement leads to better muscle activation. Refining your form ensures that you’re targeting the right muscles and reducing the risk of injury.
7. Incorporate Advanced Techniques
Once you’ve mastered the basics, techniques like drop sets, supersets, paused reps, and tempo training can add a new level of difficulty to your workouts.
How to Track Your Progress
To ensure you're actually applying progressive overload, keep a workout log. Track:
The weights you lift
The reps and sets you complete
Any changes in tempo or form
How you feel during and after training
This data helps you identify trends, adjust your approach, and stay motivated as you see your progress over time.
The Takeaway
Progressive overload is the foundation of strength training success. By making small, consistent increases in difficulty, you’ll continue to build muscle, gain strength, and improve your overall fitness. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced lifter, applying this principle will ensure that your hard work translates into real, measurable results.
Want to take your training to the next level? Start tracking your workouts and applying these progressive overload strategies today!
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Sponsors/Affiliate Links:
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Jayd (00:00):
Sticking with a consistent workout plan and then progressively overloading within that workout routine. It's a great way to know whether your routine is working or not when you stick to a certain specific routine in order of exercises. This allows you to see your body gets stronger over time as you're able to add more repetitions to the same exercise or do more weight of an exercise over time. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I'm a personal trainer and I created this podcast that I can share information and tips to help you build muscle, burn fat, and achieve your fitness goals. In today's episode, we're going to talk about seven different ways that you can progress your resistance training to make more gains. As you get stronger, you're going to need to give your muscles more challenge over time.
(01:01)
Sticking with the same amount of weight, the same number of reps and sets, and the same exercises over an extended period of time is going to inevitably lead to a plateau. But if you want to keep your muscles strong and get them to be even stronger, you're going to need to increase that challenge. So we're going to talk about how to do that in today's episode. And before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video if you are watching on YouTube and subscribe to the channel so that you always get the latest videos as soon as they drop. If you're listening to this episode, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the show so you always get the latest episodes delivered to your device. If you're looking for an online personal trainer, I am taking on new clients from my Body Sculpt coaching program, so you can check out my website Jaydigains.com for more information on how to sign up. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com. I hope to see you there. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:00)
Now, it's no secret that resistance training is a crucial piece of any exercise routine. Every week you should be doing resistance training at least one day a week to keep your muscles strong and to keep your bones strong. And resistance training is also the chief way to change your body composition by increasing your lean muscle tissue, which will help you to decrease the amount of your body that is fat mass. Now, many people make the mistake of sticking to a resistance training routine and keeping it exactly the same for weeks and weeks or months and months on end. When I used to work at a big box gym, I'd see it all the time, the same people coming in, doing the same workouts with the same amount of weights, the same number of reps, the same number of sets. Now, doing a specific workout program may initially help you to build muscle when it's new, but eventually your body is going to adapt to whatever routine that you're doing and you're likely going to hit a plateau.
(02:59)
In order to keep your muscles from hitting a plateau and to keep them getting stronger, you'll need to increase the challenge to your muscles over time as you get stronger, you should be able to perform more reps or more weight or be able to do more exercises and workout for longer. That's what you'll need to do in order to keep the stimulus going so you continue to get stronger over time, and we call this principle of increasing the challenge to your muscles little bit by little bit over time progressive overload. You don't need to be crushing yourself every day in the gym and doing super, super hard workouts. Just a little bit extra challenge every time you train goes a long way. It can be something as little as adding on five pounds to the exercise or adding on a few more reps to each set or changing the rate of motion and how slow you're performing the exercise so that you increase the time under tension.
(03:56)
Little tiny tweaks here and there to make each exercise a little bit more challenging. Every time you train will help to keep your muscles from hitting a plateau so you can continue to build muscle, get strong, burn fat, and keep your bones healthy. It also helps to keep your workouts from getting too boring. If you're doing the same thing all the time, it's easy to get bored and then fall off the wagon completely and stop showing up for your workouts. So you do want to add an element of change, something that's different to your workouts every time you train. Now, at the same time, it is important to stick to a workout program for a couple of weeks at a time, sticking with a consistent workout plan and then progressively overloading within that workout routine. It's a great way to know whether your routine is working or not when you stick to a certain specific routine in order of exercises.
(04:51)
This allows you to see your body get stronger over time as you're able to add more repetitions to the same exercise or do more weight of an exercise over time. I usually like to keep my clients on a consistent program where they're doing the same handful of workouts every week for four to six weeks at a time, and then I change up their workout program slightly so that they've got new exercises and a new order. This gives them just the right amount of time to see progression with the routine, but as soon as they start to maybe get a little bit bored of the routine, then we change it up again. Now, some people will stick to the same routine for as much as three months, and that's totally fine as long as you are practicing progressive overload within that period of time. Every time you train, you should be trying to add more challenge to your muscles even if you're doing the same routine.
(05:44)
So there are a couple of ways that we can do this that you can add more challenge to your muscles to progressively overload the exercise to progressively overload your muscles and keep them getting stronger. So let's take a look at how to do that now. Number one, the first way that you can increase the challenge to your muscles within a workout program is to increase the number of repetitions or sets that you do of an exercise. So in many of my workout programs, I start my clients off with a rep range of between eight and 12 repetitions, and I encourage them to start the first week or two of their program with an amount of resistance that is challenging for them to approach muscle failure at about eight, nine or 10 reps. And then over the course of the weeks that they have this training program, I challenge them to try to do one more repetition every time they do that exercise.
(06:36)
So in week one, they might do eight or nine repetitions in each set, and then week 2, 3, 4, they may be doing 9, 10, 11, and even 12 repetitions on the same exercise. Using that weight, you should be trying to push yourself to do more repetitions over time. For many exercises, I'll have my clients do somewhere between 10 and 15, sometimes as many as 20 repetitions depending on the exercise. When it comes to muscle building for your isolation exercises like bicep curls and tricep kickbacks, you really can push yourself to as much as 20 or 25 repetitions because the principle here is you want to keep the muscles under tension and burning that burning sensation as lactic acid builds up in the muscles is a really great way to help them to grow and get stronger. You also can just add another set to the exercise, which is what my coach commonly has me do as well.
(07:32)
Once you reach a point where you have been doing two or three sets for a while with that weight and within that eight to 12 number of repetitions, then you can add on another set to increase your total training volume. Another thing you can do, number two is increase the time under tension for your muscles. Slow your reps down. That is a great way to increase the amount of time that your muscles have to spend under load, especially when you slow down the extension or the eccentric phase of the exercise. This has a great hypertrophic effect on the muscles, which means that it stimulates muscle growth and strength gains. I encourage my clients often to perform each rep at a rate of about four seconds down with a two second pause at the bottom and then one second to come back up. If you've been doing the standard two seconds down, two seconds up rate of motion, slowing down your reps is going to feel like a big challenge, and that's a great way for you to continue to challenge yourself without necessarily having to add on more weight or do more reps.
(08:37)
Now, number three. Another way that you can increase the challenge on your muscles is to increase the amount of resistance that you use, namely the weight. So if you have been using 15 pounds on your goblet squat for a couple of weeks, maybe try the 20 or the 25 pound. You only want to gradually increase the weight in small increments, no more than about 20% of an increase at a time. Try to avoid huge jumps in how much weight you add to the exercise because greatly increasing the amount of weight could lead to injury. And keep in mind that as you increase the weight, you should only be using an amount of weight that you can execute the exercise with good technique and proper form. As soon as your form starts to break down, you should end the set. Don't count reps where you have to be sloppy on your form in order to get the weight to move, and if you find that you have to be sloppy in order to get reps out with that weight, you should not be using that weight.
(09:36)
Okay, we have a whole episode on ego lifting that you should go back and watch or listen to help yourself avoid this error. We never want to train with sloppy form. And number four, you can play with all three of the previous factors we talked about by increasing your total training volume. Training volume is the total workload and refers to the number of sets multiplied by the number of reps multiplied by the amount of weight that you use, and you can play with these variables by adjusting the number of sets, the number of reps, and the amount of weight that you use in order to give your muscles a novel stimulus and progressively overload your training. For example, if you have been practicing a five by 10 with goblet squats at 25 pounds for a couple of weeks, that means that your total training volume is 1,250, and in order to progressively overload this exercise, you could play with the number of sets, reps, and the amount of weight to increase that number to say 1500 or 1,500 to increase the total volume to 1,500.
(10:38)
You could reduce the amount of sets that you do to four and then increase the amount of reps you do to 12 using an increased amount of weight, 30 pounds, and this will come out to about 1,500. So you've played with all of the different variables in order to increase the total amount of volume. Now, another not as common variable to play with for progressively overloading your muscles is you can decrease the amount of time that you spend in your rest periods. This means that you're going into each successive set of every exercise with your muscles less recovered, so as your muscles fatigue, you're going to get more lactic acid building up, more burning happening much sooner in each set, so this increase in the challenge can yield lots of gains. Number six, another way that you can progressively overload your muscles is to improve your exercise form.
(11:29)
If you have been squatting with pretty shallow squats for a while, working on deepening your squats and breaking parallel to improve your squat form will challenge your muscles because you will be making the muscles have to work under a greater range of motion, so practicing your exercises with an increased range of motion is a great way that you can progressively overload and exercise. This also has the added benefit of helping you to reduce your risk of injury. The better your technique gets in an exercise, the less likely you are to hurt yourself doing that exercise even as you increase weight or increase your total training volume. And number seven, another way that you can progressively overload your muscles is to incorporate more advanced training techniques. You can perform variations of an exercise that are more challenging or that involves some kind of a balancing component.
(12:23)
For example, single leg squats, single legg deadlifts or exercises using a BOSU ball or stability ball. Adding a component of instability to an exercise makes the exercise harder, but it also makes your muscles have to work harder, and it also involves more muscles to keep you stable. You can also try other advanced techniques like paused repetitions or super sets. Combining multiple exercises targeting the same muscle group can also incorporate drop sets and more tempo training. You can also add explosivity to your movements like doing plyometric squats, box squats, and other explosive movements like this. All of these are great ways that you can keep the challenge on your muscles. I do have to say when it comes to doing these advanced techniques, the same rule applies to when you are increasing your weight only practice. Good form, we don't want to practice sloppy reps, so make sure that you're performing these exercises with good technique, keeping your body in alignment and keeping yourself safe.
(13:28)
A great way to make sure that you are practicing progressive overload in your training is to track your workouts. Like we said before, it is a good idea to keep a consistent training routine for at least three weeks at a time, and I recommend keeping a fitness journal so that you can write down what you do every time you train. This does a number of things. One, it creates a record for you to keep you motivated so that you can see your progress over time. It also will help you to keep track of what weight, what number of reps, and how many sets you should do, and other variables that you might change in order to progressively overload your muscles. It'll also tell you when it is time to progress your exercises. If you've been doing the same exercises, the same number of reps, same weight, et cetera, for a number of weeks, especially if you've been doing it for two weeks, then it's definitely time to advance.
(14:22)
Using a fitness journal also can help you to track other things around your training, like your readiness to train, how you're feeling before and after the workout, which is going to fluctuate over time. You can also write down how challenging an exercise was. Remember that we always want the exercises to be challenging in some way. If they feel easy, then you need to progress the exercise in some way unless you are doing priming exercises or mobility warmup and cool down exercises. When it comes to the challenge exercises in your workouts, you want to feel challenged. Now, I do have fitness journals that I sell on Amazon. You can find the link to those in the show notes or the description of this video if you're watching on YouTube. Many of my clients use these fitness journals and have found them very helpful. I use them for myself to keep track of my own workouts as well.
(15:12)
They're pretty simple, but very effective. Check out the link for that in the show notes or video description. Many of my personal training clients also use the A BC Trainer Eyes app. This is the app that I use to deliver my clients' workout programs for online training, and it includes not only a way for them to track their workouts, but it saves all of the data of previous workouts and previous times that they've done an exercise, so they always know how much weight, how many reps they should be doing. It also includes links to videos of how to do each exercise. You can find more information on that on my website, Jaydigains.com, and you'll get your workouts delivered to you through the Trainer Eyes app, which you can also use to track your workouts over time. You get a new workout routine every month that progressively overloads your muscles, and you'll be getting my help one-on-one each step of the way. You can find more information on that in the links to my show notes or in this video description. With all that said, the key takeaway here is every time you train, you should be challenging your muscles. You can change up your exercises, change up the number of reps you do, add more weight, change your total training volume in some way. Every time you train, you should be progressively overloading your muscles to keep them challenged and to avoid plateaus.
(16:31)
Thank you so much again for watching this video. Again, my name's Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. Let me know what questions you have by leaving them in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube, and also let me know how you progressively overload your muscles in your training. I'd love to hear how it's going, or you can join me while I'm live on my Twitch channel, Twitch.tv/Jaydigains, and you can chat while I'm live. I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 54: Science-Based Tips for Training Around Your Period: How Women Should Work Out
In this episode of the Coaching Corner podcast, I'm diving into a question I get a lot from female clients: Should I change my workouts based on my menstrual cycle? The short answer? It depends on you.
I walk you through the different phases of the menstrual cycle—menstrual, follicular, ovulation, and luteal—and break down how hormonal changes can affect your energy, strength, and recovery. I also share the potential benefits of training during each phase, along with practical tips for adjusting your workout intensity if needed.
This episode is all about tuning into your body, making informed decisions, and ditching the myths around performance dips during your period. My goal is to help you feel empowered in your fitness journey and confident adapting your training to your unique cycle.
Let’s stop forcing a one-size-fits-all approach to fitness and start working with our bodies instead of against them.
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode of the Coaching Corner podcast, I'm diving into a question I get a lot from female clients: Should I change my workouts based on my menstrual cycle? The short answer? It depends on you.
I walk you through the different phases of the menstrual cycle—menstrual, follicular, ovulation, and luteal—and break down how hormonal changes can affect your energy, strength, and recovery. I also share the potential benefits of training during each phase, along with practical tips for adjusting your workout intensity if needed.
This episode is all about tuning into your body, making informed decisions, and ditching the myths around performance dips during your period. My goal is to help you feel empowered in your fitness journey and confident adapting your training to your unique cycle.
Let’s stop forcing a one-size-fits-all approach to fitness and start working with our bodies instead of against them.
Links:
Sponsors/Affiliate Links:
Legion Athletics Supplements: Use code Jaydigains to get 20% off for new customers - Double loyalty points for returning customers)
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Jayd (00:00):
Men's programs typically have a pretty linear progression if it's designed for a man's body. This doesn't always work for a woman's body because we may need to deload every four weeks, and not every program offers a deload every four weeks, right? But you should feel empowered to choose that for yourself and deload as necessary. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. My name is Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. A common question that I get from my female clients is Should I change up my workouts depending on where I am in my cycle? And the answer to this question is, as always, it depends. So in this episode, we're going to take a look at the different factors that go into play at different points of your hormonal cycle and how you might think about changing up your workout program according to where you are in your cycle.
(00:57)
And before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video if you are watching on YouTube and subscribe to the channel so you always get the latest episodes. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure to follow the channel so that you always get the latest episodes as well. If you would like more information on me and the services that I offer, check out my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com. Right now, I am accepting new clients to my body sculpt workout program. You can find information for that in the show notes or the video description. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:34)
There's a discussion that we have to have at least once a year because it's something that comes up with my clients. It's something that comes up in the community, which is the question, should I train around my periods? Should I change my workouts around my period? Like any question when it comes to fitness, health and wellness, the best answer I can give you is it depends. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And the reason I say that is because every woman is different and even within the same woman, every period is different and it's going to affect you differently. And there's other factors that get involved in terms of your energy levels and your readiness to train that can play with your hormone levels and what's going on with your body around your period. If you've got really bad cramps and a really bad back ache, maybe you don't sleep as well, so you don't have as much energy.
(02:22)
So it depends. The best thing that I can say is to listen to your body and deload as needed. You don't necessarily have to not work out when you're PMSing or when you're on your period, but give yourself the permission to step back a little bit, take it a little easier. Instead of going to an RPE nine, go to an RPE eight or even seven. The most important thing is just to kind of move because the movement will help you to feel better. However, that is also to say, sometimes resting is the best thing that you can do and you just don't know until you try different things. So it really does depend. Some fitness experts and even I have a client who's seeing a chiropractor and he encouraged her to talk to me about training around her hormonal cycle, which is kind of something that I was already doing.
(03:27)
But I do think that there's a lot of misunderstanding around this topic, and it also doesn't help that it was kind of a trending topic a couple of years ago and you had a lot of influencers coming online, making content about planning your workouts around your hormonal cycle and that you should plan your workouts around your menstrual cycle. They'll sell you like a cookie cutter workout program that it's like this is how you should train around your hormonal cycle. But the problem with that is that, like I said, every period is different and every woman is different. And for some women, you don't even need to change anything about your workouts due to your menstrual cycle. I have a girlfriend who is on a pill that makes it so she doesn't get her period, but every three months and when she gets her period at the end of those three months, it might fuck her up a little bit, but not a horrible.
(04:24)
And then there's other women who are laid out for a week and a half. So anybody who tries to give you a one size fits all solution to trading around your period is just at most innocent misinformed, at worst, the scam artist. So again, it comes down to you got to know your body and listen to your body, but it's also like not all in your head. Don't let anybody shame you for needing to rest or tell you, oh, you suck it up. Basically. You might need that from your coach. If you're preparing for an athletic competition, maybe I don't know, your coach might know your body and know how you perform and be able to say if you had that relationship with them, they might be able to say that. But I see this a lot from women who have male training partners who don't know any better, and the male training partners will give the female a really hard time if she needs to skip because of her period or if she needs to take it easy.
(05:28)
I encourage you to listen to your body and do what you feel is best because there are real things happening in your body when you are going through your different stages of your hormonal cycle. So what I wanted to do today was kind of break down what the science says so that you can, if you do want to train around your period and you do want to plan your workouts around your hormonal cycle, you understand when is the right time to maybe try one style of training and when is a good time to just be very careful and when's a good time to step it back. And I also want to encourage you to just keep in mind that you can perform well at any point of your period. You may feel like shit, but you actually can perform very well even when you have cramps, even when you're grouchy and irritable.
(06:19)
The studies show that athletic performance can stay pretty consistent. So let's take a look at the different aspects of the female 28 day hormonal cycle. So unlike male bodies, the female body has 28 days of its hormonal cycle, whereas the male body has a hormonal cycle of 24 hours where they get different levels of testosterone and other hormones over the course of a 24 hour cycle over the course of a day and the morning, the male body has more testosterone, they have more energy in general, and that starts to wane and come down towards the evening. The female hormonal cycle is different over the course of a month. We have days, whole days and whole weeks where we might have more energy, more focus than others. So it's important that we are cognizant of that in terms of how it might affect our workouts, our readiness to train, our motivation towards training.
(07:21)
The first day of your hormonal cycle is the first day of your period. So we call that the menstrual phase, which is usually days one to five. It can last a little bit longer though when you're in your menstrual phase. Hormones like estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest and that's when you have your period or you would have your period. Some women don't bleed, some people don't actually bleed for their periods, but their hormones still have that cycle. I have a couple of clients that are athletes that don't actually get their periods, but their hormonal cycle is kind of similar. So we try to think about tracking when they would have their cycle and keeping an eye on energy levels that way. After you finish your period, you have your follicular phase, which is usually days six to 14, and this is when your estrogen levels start to rise and your body begins to prepare you for ovulation.
(08:24)
And ovulation is when your body releases an egg. So the ovulation phase usually happens around 14 days, and that's when your estrogen levels rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, and then it peaks. That's when the estrogen levels are at their highest. And then you have your luteal phase, which is that run up to your period between ovulation and actually starting your period. And the luteal phase is after ovulation, progesterone levels rise and they prepare your body for a potential pregnancy. If you don't conceive, then your hormone levels will drop and that's when your period starts. Then the process starts over and over again, plus or minus every 28 days for a really long time. The common belief was that menstruation makes you weaker and less capable in the gym. And a lot of people believed that they shouldn't work out when they're on their period. And it's true for some women, you may feel extremely fucked up when you're on your period.
(09:31)
You may have really bad cramps and you may just feel like you need to rest and stay home for a day or two. And you know what? If that's what your body needs, then you might need to do that. But the science shows that you actually can exercise on your period and you don't actually lose strength and you don't actually see a dip in your performance. So if you're a competitive athlete and you have a competition that just so happens to land on while you're on your period, you may be thinking, well, fuck. Well, there goes the record that I was planning on setting, right? That's not necessarily the case. In fact, women actually can perform really, really well during their period. Right now we're sort of like in this stage where there's a lot of studies being done to kind of look at this.
(10:27)
So the science is really new and it's changing pretty rapidly because just scientists have not really been looking at the effects of menstruation on female athletes for a number of reasons. It's not just because science is sexist and that academia is a male dominated field. That's definitely part of it. But the other part of it though is because the female hormonal cycle has 28 days, it's very hard to use women, female bodies as any kind of control group. It's hard to control for those factors because how a woman's hormonal levels will be different on day to day throughout her entire 28 day cycle. And again, not every period is the same. So on day 13 of last month's cycle, you might have a certain amount of estrogen and progesterone in your body, and then you go to day 13 of the next cycle and it can be radically different and there's no way to predict for that.
(11:32)
So it's hard to study the female body and the effects of these hormones on anything medicine wise or fitness wise because her bodies are so inconsistent. So there hasn't been a whole lot of studies around women's bodies and therefore a lot of the exercise science leading up until now kind of treated women as small men, basically just looking at the muscle mass of men versus women. Women in general tend to have less muscle mass than men. Women tend to be shorter than men. And so a lot of the studies that use male bodies have been used to say, this is what happens in the human body, and apply it over to women just assuming that women are just like a smaller man. And that's not true because our hormonal levels change and they do affect many aspects of our lives, including our readiness to train and how we recover from training a really great source of information on the latest studies and the current science on the effect of the hormonal cycle on women and female bodies who are interested in fitness.
(12:52)
If you're a female athlete and you're interested in seeing how your menstrual cycle affects your training, Dr. Stacey Sims has a book called roar. She actually has two books, one called roar, which is all about the exercise science surrounding premenopausal women's bodies, and it goes into how you can optimize your training and performance around your menstrual cycle. She has a second book called, I believe it's called Next Level, which talks about the effects of perimenopause and menopause and how that may affect your training and how to optimize your training to factor in all of the things that are going on with that. So a lot of this, like what we're talking about, comes from Dr. SIM's research and with all of her studies where she's conducted studies but also has been looking at the studies around how the menstrual cycle affects women and their readiness to train and the performance as athletes, she has come up with these recommendations in terms of how to modify your workout program around your menstrual cycle.
(14:03)
The first phase, your menstrual phase, Dr. Sims calls your secret weapon. Okay, so contrary to common belief, your period is actually a really good time for you to train hard because your estrogen and progesterone levels are at their lowest. That makes it a lot easier for you to access stored carbohydrates for energy, which allows you to one, have more energy during the workout, but also to recover from the workout. Your pain tolerance is higher, and that means that you can push yourself past when you maybe normally would stop. So if you're trying to build muscle and you want to get close to muscle failure, you might be able to push a little bit harder during this period, literally during your period. So what Stacey Sims recommends is during this time, if you wanted to do a weekly undulating periodized program, periodized, you could time heavy strength training or high intensity interval training or sprint work, something that's going to demand your body a lot.
(15:12)
You could do that during your menstrual phase days, one through five of your menstrual cycle. Now, your follicular phase, she calls your peak performance time, and as your estrogen levels rise, this can lead to you feeling stronger and having more capacity for endurance training. And your coordination, your neuromuscular coordination goes up as well steadily as your estrogen levels rise from day six to 14 of your menstrual cycle. So at this point, your body is more efficient at utilizing carbohydrates, which makes it a great time for you to be progressively overloading in your workouts and doing your intense or high volume training. This is a good time for you to do, continue doing heavy lifting, explosive power training, speed work and endurance space sessions are really great for this time period. Now, all of this culminates during ovulation. Ovulation is like your mama bear strength time.
(16:19)
That's when you feel like a super woman, your estrogen levels have peaked, your testosterone gets a slight boost as well. And what this can do is lead to you feeling very powerful and you can really perform some prs during this time. However, because the estrogen level is higher, this also leads to higher ligament laity and you have a greater risk of injury. For example, ACL. Tears are very, very common during ovulation, so it's something to be careful of. You can test your prs during ovulation, you'll probably perform really, really well. However, there's a risk of you overdoing it during this time because you feel so strong. So just make sure that you're progressing gradually. Remember the principles of progressive overload. You might feel tempted to jump and add a shit ton of weight to the bar to test some prs or run more sprints than what you normally would.
(17:28)
Make sure that if you are going to be progressing during this time, if you are going to be pushing yourself, keep it within reasonable limits. I personally like to follow a rule of thumb of no more than 20% of an increase at a time. So if you're feeling really strong, then add 20% more weight to the bar or do 20% more reps or 20% more time under tension. Okay, no more than that because more than that, you risk accidentally hurting one of your ligaments. And a ligament injury takes a really long time to heal. Okay? This is a good time for heavy lifting, testing your maxes, doing some explosive power training Olympic lifts, but you do want to make sure that you are properly warming up and performing stability work to prevent injury. And then finally, when you enter into your luteal phase, after ovulation ends and your luteal phase, that's when it's time to shift gears.
(18:28)
That's when it would be if you do tend to be affected by your period, this is a good time to deload. This is a good time to deload because increases in your progesterone levels can lead to higher body temperature as well as reduce carbohydrate availability and increased fatigue, which means that working out is going to feel harder because you're just going to feel more tired. You also are likely going to have a harder time recovering from your workouts during this time, and it also becomes really, really important for you to continue to hydrate. Hydration levels are really important here because with the higher body temperature, you're probably going to be sweating more. So all of that combined can lead you to feeling like crap, and I feel like crap during my luteal phase. So that's usually a time that I am going to deload and maybe scale back a little bit.
(19:20)
And what I'll do often if I am in a power lifting block when I enter my luteal phase, I don't feel safe to do any really heavy lifts. I'm not really going to be trying to lift anything above 80% of my one rep max. So even if I am in an intensification block or a peaking block for power lifting, if I'm really feeling the effects of my luteal phase, I will just drop the weight down to more of an accumulation range of weight. So I'll be doing something between 60% and 75% of my one rep max, and I'll just do more reps because it's just safer. It feels safer, and you also lose a little bit of coordination during this time too. You might find that when you are in your luteal phase, when you're PMSing, you're more clutsy, you might be more clumsy, you knock things over, you drop things more.
(20:20)
Well, when it comes to your workouts, especially when it comes to something that is really demanding neuromuscularly like power lifting, heavy lifting or Olympic lifts, if you're not fully connected to your body or if you've got a little bit of coordination issues, that could very easily lead to injury. So if you're feeling really fucked up due to PMSing, this would be a good time for you to deload back, maybe focus on more muscle building or accumulation level lifts, or you could just take a full break from lifting or whatever high intensity activity you do, and instead just do some steady state cardio. Again, you could bump it back to just being moderate level resistance training. Doing some yoga and mobility work is also a good option for this time period, and it will probably make you feel better too, doing some breathing exercises or just going for walks.
(21:17)
These are all good options if you're feeling really fucked up during your luteal phase. And then once you hit your period, once day one of your period starts, then you can go back to progressively ramping up your workouts. So if you are affected by your periods, this is a great way for you to think about changing up your workouts. As you go through your 28 day cycle, what you can probably do is think of a three week block progressively gradually increasing the intensity of your workout sessions basically until you hit your luteal face or your PMSing in usually week three, right? Day 17 to 28. Well, I guess week four, that would be week four. So you could do three weeks on, and then week four would be a deload for you because you know you're going to be ramping up to being on your period that week deload, and then restart in day one.
(22:18)
And again, gradually increase progressively week one through three, deload, week four, rinse and repeat. So that's a great option to train around your period. Now, I do have to say for a lot of women, your period may not actually be that consistent. In theory, yeah, sure should be getting my period every four weeks, but for very different reasons. You might get one every three weeks, maybe every six weeks, maybe every eight weeks. If you are experiencing perimenopause, you might have months without your period. You may go three, four, or 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 months right before you have a period again. So this is not like a surefire thing, it's not a one size fits all, but it does give you something to think about in terms of, again, I want to encourage you to listen to your body if you feel like your period is affecting you.
(23:16)
Just know that there is some very real science behind how your hormonal cycle is affecting you, and I want you to feel empowered to make some choices about how you might modify or choose in the moment how to modify your workout program. There's nothing wrong with just getting on a regular bro program like a bro split five days a week, and men's programs typically have a pretty linear progression if it's designed for a man's body. This doesn't always work for a woman's body because we may need to deload every four weeks, and not every program offers a deload every four weeks, but you should feel empowered to choose that for yourself and deload as necessary. The studies don't show that you're actually going to, performance is going to suffer. It's more that you will suffer, you will suffer, but your performance might not necessarily suffer. So if you are signed up for a competition, don't worry if you are on your period or if you're up PM sing because you can still perform well, you'll just feel like shit, and you might have a hard time recovering. So these are things to think about, right? As a woman or someone who has a female body, I want to empower you to listen to your body, know your body, and you can use this information to make the best decision for yourself when it comes to training around your hormonal cycle.
(24:49)
Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Coaching Corner Podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I hope that you found the information in this podcast episode helpful, and let me know if you have any questions. If you're watching on YouTube, you can leave your questions or comments in the comments below. Again, make sure that you have liked this video, if you found it helpful, and that you've subscribed to the channel so that you always get the latest episodes and videos. If you're listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the show so you always get the latest episodes delivered to your device. I drop new episodes on Mondays and Thursdays, and if you check out my YouTube channel, I also drop smaller videos throughout the week. You could also join me while I'm live on my Twitch channel, doing my workouts on Tuesdays and Fridays. Just go to Twitch.tv/Jaydigains and hit follow. Thank you so much again for joining me. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 53: How to Avoid Fitness Scams
In this episode, I'm diving into the world of fitness influencers—and why you shouldn't believe everything you see (or hear) on your feed. From over-the-top transformation claims to misleading “quick fixes,” the fitness space on social media is full of content that looks good but lacks real substance.
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode, I'm diving into the world of fitness influencers—and why you shouldn't believe everything you see (or hear) on your feed. From over-the-top transformation claims to misleading “quick fixes,” the fitness space on social media is full of content that looks good but lacks real substance.
I break down the red flags to watch for, like shady supplement pushes, unrealistic body standards, and advice that’s more viral than valid. Plus, I'll share tips on how to spot credible fitness professionals and get the trustworthy, science-backed information you actually need to reach your goals.
Whether you're new to fitness or just tired of the noise online, this episode will help you filter out the fluff and stay focused on what really works.
Links:
Sponsors/Affiliate Links:
Legion Athletics Supplements: Use code Jaydigains to get 20% off for new customers - Double loyalty points for returning customers)
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Jayd (00:00):
If you are looking for content that is to make you feel better about yourself in whatever respect, wellness, fitness, spirituality. So anywhere where people are seeking answers or seeking to feel better about themselves or to understand their place in the grand scheme of life, there are people out there who are going to take advantage and so it's something you want to be on the lookout for. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years and I've created this podcast to share with you the tips and lessons that I share with my personal training clients. In today's episode, I'm going to share with you a conversation that I had with my Twitch chat when I was live on my Twitch channel, Twitch tv slash Jaydigains. We were discussing the topic of how to spot bad fitness and wellness influencers.
(01:04)
If you've spent any amount of time on the internet and social media, you've probably seen some pretty wacky influencers out there promoting misinformation or trying to sell you on some kind of a scam. So in this conversation I'm sharing some tips to recognize red flags for when you are watching content from an influencer that may be trying to scam you or give you bad information. I'm also going to share some green flags to look for and fitness influencers that actually are worth listening to. And before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video and subscribe to my channel. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you are listening to the podcast, make sure that you have followed the channel so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. If you're interested in learning more about me and if you want to work with me as your personal trainer, you can check out my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G s.com. You can also join my membership where I post monthly workout plans, meal plans, recipes, training tips, fat loss tips and nutrition tips, all that can be found on my website. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:19)
So I want to talk about this topic and I do want to say I go back and forth about calling myself an influencer, like a fitness influencer. I do think that in terms of what an influencer is, is a person on social media who influences other people by definition, the actual job, how they make money, what their whole thing is. What they're supposed to do is make content that gives a lot of views, gets a lot of engagement. The goal is to go viral as often as possible. So when you're an influencer, typically you pick some kind of a theme or you've got some kind of a brand, some kind of a vibe, some kind of a catch phrase or something that's recognizable. And the goal is to go viral as often as possible, to get as many views as possible, to get as much engagement as possible.
(03:27)
That's how influencers get paid. We and I do say we, because I am a partnered creator on multiple platforms and I do get paid for certain amounts of views on TikTok, I get paid for the certain amounts of views at one minute, and there's other tiers of pay where you get paid for a certain amount of comments. So as you can probably put together when it comes to being an influencer in the fitness space, if the goal is views, virality, comments, engagement, then it's a kind of slippery slope to where you can find yourself creating content for engagement that maybe isn't necessarily good information or good guidance or possibly has a negative impact on somebody's fitness journey or their mental health or their idea of themselves. So on the other hand, what I actually do see myself as is what I am professionally. I'm a coach, I coach people.
(04:40)
I'm a personal trainer. I have one-on-one personal training clients that I serve in person and online and through my podcast. My podcast is all about teaching people how to build a healthy lifestyle, how to make progress on their fitness journey. So my priority is to educate and help people. That's what I see my job as. And so what I put out there is not always going to be the most viral. It's not always going to be the most the type of content that's going to necessarily get a lot of engagement and a lot of views because what a lot of influencers will do is put controversial information out there. They'll put controversial, takes a video of them saying something controversial because they're banking on people going to the comments and correcting them and having arguments because you can have arguments in the chat or in the comments that drives engagement.
(05:42)
Whereas for me, what I'm trying to do is put together content that I can share with my clients and followers and subscribers to help them move along in their fitness journey. So the drive of success is different for someone who's a coach, who's trying to help people versus an influencer who is trying to get views, trying to get engagement. And sometimes it can be really difficult to tell what kind of a person you're dealing with when you're scrolling on social media. Sometimes it can be very difficult to tell whether the person who is presenting information in front of you is giving you good information or if they're just an influencer trying to drive engagement. So that makes it very tricky and difficult. And the problem is not just that these people are sharing bad information and it's going viral and a lot of people are learning things that could potentially hurt them.
(06:46)
It goes even further than that in that the rabbit hole goes pretty deep. But there's also a pretty significant, what we might call the fitness to alt-right pipeline, which is prominent and exists all over the internet everywhere where people are seeking information on how to live or how to make themselves feel better. There is an alt-right pipeline that goes with that thing. You see it in the spirituality community. There's the spirituality to alt-right pipeline where you have people who are getting into magic and people who are reading tarot cards and they get lured in with these things that will make them feel better or help them to make sense of their life, and it can be very easy to pull them over into just little bit by little bit. They get kind of conditioned into more and more like white supremacy. You also see this with the wellness community as well.
(07:53)
There's the clean eating trad wife content that kind of is a funnel can become a funnel toward the alt-right where conversations start to devolve into women's place is in the kitchen and that's what they should be doing and women should be making babies and that's all they should be doing. So there's a lot of these pipelines on the internet and wherever you're hanging out on the internet, whether it's here on Twitch, whether it's on YouTube, if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're on social media, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, wherever it is that you're hanging out, if you are looking for content that is to make you feel better about yourself in whatever respect, wellness, fitness, spirituality, Christianity, I think we are all just look at our government and you can see that the very clear Christian to alt-right pipeline that exists in this country in particular, but it's always existed.
(08:53)
So anywhere where people are seeking answers or seeking to feel better about themselves or to understand their place in the grand scheme of life, there are people out there who are going to take advantage. And so it's something you want to be on the lookout for. They'll either try to take advantage of you by selling you crap that doesn't work. They might take advantage of you by teaching you information that's just plain wrong and following it could at the best lead to you wasting your time and money. At worst. It could end up getting you sick or even dying or unloving. And also there's people who might try to sell you on some kind of a belief system, which might be political or religious. So you want to be super careful about that when you're navigating these spaces online. These pipelines have always existed and they probably always will, but you need to be on the lookout for these kinds of things.
(09:56)
Scammers of all types, whether they're trying to sell you a product that doesn't work, fucked up ideology, et cetera. They kind of all have very similar things in common. And if you dive into cults and how cults behave, there's a lot of similarities in how scammers operate in the same way that the wellness or fitness or health or crunchy, granola, clean eating to alt-right pipeline works. They all kind of do the same kind of stuff. So once you kind of start to understand what the red flags are to look out for, then you'll be a lot more protected against these bad actors in the space, which will for you, allow you to sift through bad information so that you don't end up hurting yourself, wasting your money, wasting your time, or potentially getting sucked into fucked up ideology and political movement. That's what I wanted to share today.
(11:02)
Have you guys noticed, what have you seen? What kind of shitty stuff have you seen on the internet? What are the trademark things that these scammers and these just these bad actors, what are the things that they do that maybe gives you the ick or tells you, I think this might be, there's something suspicious here. What are things that set off the alarms for you guys referencing a vague them? Oh yeah, a reference and other reference in group versus outgroup we're not like other people. We're not like those shady people over there, but it's vague. It has to be vague, A vague other brain rock content, anything that expresses an idea in some kind of absolute manner without explaining any nuance, IE literally everything short form. Yeah, I think there's room for a debate there, but yeah, short form a lot of times if it's like 15 seconds or less, how can you fit any kind of nuance into that?
(12:05)
Because the truth is when it comes to fitness and wellness and health in general, most of the time the answer to any question that you could come up with is it depends that you're dealing with someone who fucking knows their shit if that's what they respond with most of the time. Someone who knows what they're talking about and someone who isn't just trying to sell you on some bullshit is more often than not going to say it depends. That's a trademark thing. That's a green flag to look for when it comes to fitness influencers and health influencers. Science influencers positions anyone other than themselves as trying to trick you or feed you lies, right? So if they're like, oh yeah, the fitness industry doesn't want you to know this one, secret coaches don't want you to know this secret, but I've got it all figured out.
(13:02)
I'm going to tell you what they don't want you to know. Exactly. Yeah. That's a lot of times a really good sign that you're dealing with something that's a little slimy. And the thing is, I think that a lot of us intuitively can tell when we're being bullshitted. I do think that our guts often can tell when we're dealing with someone who's bullshitting. But the problem is that in order to function in this society so often we turn our alarms off, we go along like, okay, I'll hear this out. You know what I mean? Or maybe you've been conditioned by toxic relationships in your life to just tune your alarms out. And that is when you're particularly susceptible to these kinds of scams and dangerous pipelines, if you have existed in or do currently exist in a toxic relationship that where you have been kind of conditioned to not trust your intuition and to not trust yourself and trust your body and what your body's telling you, if you have been gaslit a lot, it is very easy for you to get taken advantage of by fitness influencers and people who don't really have your best interest in mind.
(14:27)
So ultimately that's going to be an ongoing issue in your life no matter what, and it's not just going to affect your health, it's not going to just affect how you interact with social media. So that's something to work on with a good therapist. Oh, they could be talking about mainstream health info resources, what we think we know about food in a way that's like conspiracy, that kind of get you to doubt what accredited institutions say when they get you to start to not trust in science and scientists don't listen to what the NIH says, don't listen to what the CDC says. Don't listen to what the World Health Organization says and they get you to basically doubt scientists and experts. Yeah, I'm the only one who will tell you the truth. They give you that kind of a vibe. Exactly. So the common red flags that I came up with when I was researching and preparing this discussion, one is over the top claims, which I understand that if you are completely new to fitness and health and new, this is your very first time even thinking about fitness and health.
(15:47)
This is going to be a little bit harder for you to spot, but there are a lot of bad influencers out there who will make over the top claims. For example, things like lose 10 pounds in a week, lose 50 pounds in a month, or this exercise will give you abs in 30 days. Be very, very careful about any program that says it's going to give you abs in a certain amount of time, or this exercise will give you abs in this amount of time. That a really good, that's a very bright red flag because the truth is the uncomfortable truth that many people do not want to accept is that sustainable fitness takes time. Getting to the point where you have a low body fat percentage and you have enough muscle to have muscle definition, it takes time for many people, the fitness transformation going from the place where you're overweight to the place where you have washboard abs, that is a process that for most people takes minimum two years at minimum, and that's quick.
(16:59)
So in reality, building muscle burning fat, getting the dream physique that you want, settle in, buckle up because this is a long process. Anybody who wants to tell you that they have a short fix for you or a quick fix for you is lying to you, is trying to hook you, is trying to get you to engage with their content so that they can make money or they are trying to sell you something that likely doesn't work in the most harmless way, doesn't work, but at the worst could actually hurt you, make you sick or even kill you, right? Right. Use this one trick to instantly lose 20 pounds or something like that. These are outrageous claims, so anybody who's trying to give you a really fast, you're going to reach this specific goal in a very short amount of time. That is a good sign that you're dealing with a bullshitter or you end up in a cult or an MLM.
(18:05)
Exactly. Because they use these same strategies as well. Good point, pa. Also, another thing that's a good red flag is does this person have any kind of credentials or science-based advice we were talking about earlier? If they try to get you to doubt a accredited scientific communities and peer reviewed scientifically based concepts, especially things that are pretty well accepted, if they are trying to get you to doubt that and doubt science, you're likely dealing with a scammer or a bullshitter or someone who's trying to get you on some kind of a pipeline. I mean, anyone can go onto the internet and call themselves a fitness expert, myself included. So even though I've been working as a personal trainer for 10 years and I've been certified through different organizations and different specializations, so I got my first personal training certification through NASA and afa, and then I've gotten multiple certifications since then.
(19:14)
I was a group fitness certified group fitness instructor for a while. I've gotten across MAGA teaching certification, I have accredited certifications and I'm always being educated trying to keep up with continuing education units. So if someone doesn't have any kind of credentials, at least a bachelor's, if you're going education-wise, they at least have a bachelor's in exercise physiology or kinesiology science like that, or they have some kind of certification through a certifying agency that's accredited like nasa, ace, a certified strength and conditioning coach. They need to have some kind of a connection or at least are science-based and using actual science in their advice and it should be stuff that you can verify, right? It's important that when they're talking about if they're making claims, especially claims that are sort of going against the grain that they are referencing, actually peer reviewed scientific papers and journals because there are a lot of shit flus out there who are being like, the health scientists don't want you to know this, and then they basically give you garbage.
(20:40)
So there needs to be some kind of a link if they are themselves not accredited with a university or accrediting organization, at the very least when they're talking about something they should be referencing, the science and the science should be something that you yourself can verify. You should be able to go and look and read, look at and read articles and papers on the topic, and a really good fitness influencer, if they have a blog, they will often link directly to the research that will tell you more about the thing that they're talking about. There are a lot of really good fitness influencers who do this, who do link directly to the studies.
(21:33)
How do I say his name? Menno, right? Just wait, no. Is it Menno? I don't know how to actually say his name. He's a good example of someone who's always talking about the science. He himself also is a researcher. Sometimes he will talk about some pretty controversial stuff because it'll be like this study that just came out kind of makes us think differently about this thing, but he's going into the science and also making it something that you can kind of digest as a normal person. Lane Norton also does a lot of focus on the science, and he also has a journal that kind of summarizes the latest research and exercise physiology and kinesiology into real people language. So that's another pretty good one. Well, Dr. Mike. Yeah, Dr. Mike also a really good one, literally a researcher, really jacked, amazing dude who's the short blonde guy.
(22:36)
He didn't actually go to school for it, but he actually now participates in studies. Jeff Nipper, there we go. Jeff Nipper. Jeff Nipper is another really good one. So these are influencers who are talking about science and who are linking to the science and breaking down the science into easy to understand terms and also how to apply it in your own training, but people who get you to doubt science and scientists don't want you to know this kind of stuff. That's a big red flag. If they want to position themselves as the one true connection to the truth, whatever the truth is that they are claiming they that is a red flag. And in general, the more anecdotal and opinion-based the content is, the more skeptical you should be. Okay, so other red flags that you should be on the lookout for when you come across a fitness influencer, health influencer, if they are demonizing or on the other hand, overhyping some food or supplements if they are all about some kind of one ingredient that's going to change your life.
(23:59)
Perfect example of this is apple cider vinegar. That is a good kind of segue towards a wellness influencer that recently Netflix actually made a dramatized, sort of like a life story type of thing, what would you call it? There's a drama on Netflix about the rise and fall of Belle Gibson, who is an Australian wellness influencer who rose to prominence in the early 2000 tens and she gained a huge following and she also got promoted by major companies like Apple, and I think it was Penguin Publishing published her cookbook, the whole pantry. She wrote her prominence in the 2000 tens, early 2000 tens with her app that was in the Apple app store and was promoted by Apple. And what she basically claimed was that she had had cancer multiple times and that she had cured her own cancer. And so all you had to do was follow along with her recommendations, buy her cookbook and use the app and you could basically cure your own cancer.
(25:30)
That was the claim. That was the claim, which is a really kind of, you get a couple of red flags there already. She's already making pretty outrageous claims, which was like red flag number one. But one of the things that's about that whole period of time was this rise in popularity of apple cider vinegar, which everybody was kind promoting on social media. I saw all over social media, it was kind of like a juice diet type of cleanse thing that drinking apple cider vinegar and basically reducing your food intake would cure you of all kinds of ailments. And it turned out that she was a complete fake. Not only did she lie about having cancer multiple times, she lied about her age. She was incredibly young when she rose to prominence. I think she was 18, but she lied and said that she was in her mid twenties and journalists began to expose the inconsistencies in her cancer narrative.
(26:36)
So then she admitted in a 2015 interview that she never actually had been diagnosed with cancer and then she was fined 400,000 Australian dollars for breaching consumer loss, but she actually never paid that money. So it's wild, and it was actually one of my personal training clients who recommended watching apple cider vinegar. But this is a great example of someone who basically was a shitty influencer who got lots of money, lots of recognition, was even promoted by Apple, got this big published cookbook that was recommended and she was everywhere, but what she was basically promoting was complete bullshit. She never even had cancer to begin with and people who were trying to follow her recommendations were not getting better. They were actually getting sick. So that's a good example of somebody who is trying to take advantage, and that's one of the best examples. She's making these outrageous claims and other influencers too.
(27:53)
I saw a lot of influencers in that time period being like, drink apple cider vinegar in the morning every day and it will cure everything right now there's benefits to vinegar and there's a lot of benefits to apple cider vinegar in particular, but it is not this super food that's going to save your life. It's not this messiah of a food if they are trying to promote anything, it's like the Messiah thing that's going to save your life and fix you, whether that's a food, an exercise program, a diet, a meditation, if they present anything as your fix, your cure, all that is a big red flag that you're dealing with a shit flu, right? And again, what we were talking about with influencers, if someone is trying to be an influencer and that's their job, their primary goal is to get something to go viral, right?
(28:47)
They're trying to get engagement, and so you can tell a lot of times if you're dealing with this person, they have a sense of they're trying to get virality or engagement over accuracy When you watch their videos, when you read their blogs or whatever, if their main focus is driving engagement versus actually sharing information, you're likely dealing with a bullshit if that's the majority of their content. Now, that's not to say a lot of really good fitness influencers, coaches, people who are giving good information, they will often make posts with the goal of going viral with the goal of reaching a lot of people in order to grow their audience. So that is a thing that a lot of good actors will do in order to drive eyeballs to their platform, but most of what they put out there is going to be good information backed in science, and most of it is not going to give you that icky used car salesman type of vibe.
(29:54)
Here's a red flag that you see I think a lot on the TikTok and Instagram side of the fitness influencer spectrum, which is that there's a priority of aesthetic over expertise. Just because somebody looks aesthetic does not mean that they know what they're talking about. So someone who posts a lot of videos where they look really jacked or they look really toned and they're posting how to type of content or they're posting their workouts just because they look really aesthetic does not mean that their advice is necessarily sound. Especially a lot of these younger influencers, these younger fitness influencers who are in their early twenties, some of them are even teenagers, a lot of those dudes, they look really aesthetic because one, they're fucking young, their bodies are still growing and they have a lot more testosterone in their bodies than older men. Two, a lot of these young bros are on gear, a lot of them are on steroids, so doing their workout is not necessarily going to make your body look the way that their body looks.
(31:00)
Your body is going to look the way that your body looks when you work out, which you don't know until you work out and you've done it for a long time. So just because somebody has an impressive physique doesn't mean that the science behind what they're doing is sound, and it doesn't mean that you should necessarily take their advice or that you should necessarily even copy what they're doing. A lot of fitness influencers have recently been called out and exposed for having what they recommend that you do, what their recommended diet is and their recommended. They say this is what their workout is, but that's not actually what their workout is. They're posting content in order to get viral, in order to get views, but their actual workout is probably a lot more boring. You see a lot of fitness influencers posting themselves doing these wild routines that nobody is actually really doing every day.
(31:53)
You know what I mean? So that's something also that you should be really suspicious of or skeptical of is especially when they're posting themselves doing really crazy stuff that looks like crazy, crazy hard and likely, a lot of times that's not their actual workout. They're just creating content, and that's what I mean by when they're, that's something that fitness influencers will often do, focusing on virality and engagement over accuracy. This isn't what they're actually doing and following what their advice is not necessarily going to yield the body that you're after. Also, another thing that's a red flag is conflicts of interest via monetization. So the way that most influencers actually make most of their money is through sponsorships. So fitness influencers will make content in order to get a lot of views, and then companies who want to sell a product to the audience that interacts with that person will approach the influencer and say, Hey, promote our product and we will pay you X, Y, Z, or you'll get a cut of every sale that uses your code.
(33:10)
This is something that you have to do in order to make money, and this is something that good influencers and bad influencers get involved with as well. There are good podcasts and good YouTube channels that have sponsors that they use, and then there's also shitty influencers. But what you want to be on the lookout for is when the product that they're promoting makes some kind of promise that's like a red flag that what we talked about before, it was like, this is a super food. This is going to solve all of your problems. This is going to change your life. Supplements are a really good example of this. There are a lot of fitness influencers who make a lot of their money off of selling supplements, and I also, I have an agreement with Legion Legion who sells supplements, but you have to keep in mind a lot of the supplement industry is not terribly well regulated, and there are a lot of supplements that claim to do things that they haven't really scientifically been verified to do.
(34:15)
There's nothing wrong with monetizing your content. That is how we often get paid. But are the companies that they are working with, are they themselves scams? They is the product promising? All of these things that we talked about before that are signs of bullshitting, a lot of bullshit supplements out there. So how do they interact with this product and also do they even use it themselves? A lot of fitness influencers get sponsored by products that they don't even use, and that's kind of a red flag to me as well. I try to only accept sponsorship from products that I actually use. So when I was sponsored by HelloFresh, I was using HelloFresh. I still use HelloFresh recipes to this day, really love them, not sponsored right now, and I'm also sponsored by Legion. I do recommend their supplements because everything that they sell basically is science backed and they discuss the science on their website.
(35:12)
They actually make the opposite of that claim that you might hear from a shit flu. This product is going to solve all of your problems. The first thing that the tagline you say you see is you don't need supplements to build muscle, loose fat and get healthy, but the right ones can help. And that's what a good responsible influencer would say. And also a good responsible product. Does the products that this person promotes, do they kind of give you that sort of scam feel, right? So those are kind of signs that you can kind of watch out for what kind of products is this person promoting and are they promoting products that kind of undermine what they say they want to do, which is help you be healthy and help you be fit. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is exactly.
(36:04)
Now, unfortunately, a lot of influencers do not actually provide full transparency, unlike whether they're sponsored or not. And technically, if you are sponsored by any brand and you're plugging a brand, you should say, Hey, I'm sponsored by them. Hey, I have a deal with them, legal and ethical. But a lot of influencers don't. A lot of influencers don't actually, they're not transparent about, Hey, I actually get a kickback when you sign up for this thing, which is like, that's really bad practices and it's not legal either. In fact, when I'm doing a sponsored stream here on Twitch, I have to check, there's a little box that says this is a sponsored stream or this contains promoted content. A lot of influencers don't actually say that. That's why you'll notice that when I'm talking about a product that I really like and someone else too, like Chris for example, if Chris is streaming or she's talking on her vlogs, if she's talking about a product that she really likes, we're pretty fast to say, not sponsored by the way, I'm not sponsored by them.
(37:10)
I just really like this. That's what you should do. And so someone who is credible or credible, someone's credible, someone who is ethical and moral is likely going to give a caveat like that. There's going to be transparency around their monetization fake natty culture. That is another thing. I mentioned it before, especially these young kids, there is a growing number of influencers who claim that they're natural, meaning that they're not on steroids, that they never have used steroids while secretly they are using steroids or performance enhancing drugs. So these influencers will set an unrealistic body standard, and that can lead to some pretty significant disappointment. If you are looking to them, you're trying to follow their workout program, you're trying to eat the way that they suggest, and they're telling you do this thing so you can look like me, but they're actually, they're on steroids.
(38:11)
That is a huge red flag. So if someone is super, super jacked and super, super lean all the time, that's that's not a surefire like this person's not natty, but it is something to think about. It is something to be suspicious of because most people who are in a healthy fitness journey go through cycles of periods where they may have a higher body fat percentage and they may have a lower body fat percentage depending on whether they are prioritizing building muscle or burning fat, because if you are actually naty in order to build muscle, a lot of times you do need to be eating a calorie surplus, which leads to a loss of muscle definition. So someone who's super, super lean and defined all the time but is still getting bigger. It's not to say that it can't happen. There are definitely people who are genetically blessed who can stay really, really lean and put on a lot of muscle at the same time, but it is something that you should be like that's a little suspicious, and especially if they say that they're, A lot of people that you see who are super, super jacked are not actually naty.
(39:29)
So if they promote this idea that you have to follow what I do and you'll look like me, that's a red flag to me, that's a red flag. Any kind of person who's like, do this this and you'll look like me if you want to have, or they'll imply it. If you want to have my type of physique or if you want to have a good butt and they show their butt, you just need to do this one thing. That's a big red flag. Also, going back to the whole idea of demonizing or over-hyping foods and supplements. At the same time, a lot of fitness influencers or shitty influencers will hype up one food as the food that's going to solve all your problems, or this food is going to make you burn fat. This food is going to make you burn 20 pounds of fat. At the same time, if they're demonizing one food where they're like, you should never eat this, five foods you should never eat, that's a pretty common clickbait title because the foods that are right for your body and that are going to help you to live your best fitness journey are very unique to you. And again, anybody who's worth their salt as a coach or as a guide or as someone to give advice is going to say in every situation, it depends. So what foods are right for you? It depends.
(40:56)
So be cautious that they're also demonizing foods and saying, you should never eat this or you should never drink this, that kind of a thing. And then finally, another one, another red flag, last red flag that we'll talk about is promoting extreme workouts or extreme diets. There's a common catchphrase among shitty influencers, shitty gym influencers who will be like no days off workout plans, and they're really hard workouts too that are doing lots of high intensity interval training, really heavy lifting or high volume lifting with very little rest and recovery. That's a red flag for me. A lot of fitness influencers on YouTube, you'll see they'll be follow along with this workout to build X, y, Z to get washboard apps, and it will just be an hour of high intensity interval training. It's unrealistic, really, really hard. Really extreme workouts or extreme diets eat like this for a month, and it's basically a juice cleanse where you don't get to eat solid food for a month or any kind of juice cleanse.
(42:11)
We've talked about cleanses and detoxes before on the podcast, but promoting any kind of extreme diet or extreme workout that gives you this feeling of like, oh, I'm doing something. It must be working in the short term, like a quick fix type of thing. That is a red flag because again, real progress, real sustainable fitness progress takes time. It takes time. If you are overweight and you want to look toned, like you want to get lean and you want to have muscle definition, really you need to be thinking in terms of years. You need to be thinking in terms of a year from now, two years from now, because it really does take that long to reach those goals in a sustainable way, in a way that's likely not going to hurt you or get you sick, and that you'll actually be able to sustain in the long run.
(43:08)
So those are red flags to look out for when it comes to shitty influencers, fitness influencers or bad actors, people who don't have your best interest in mind. And I think that we can tell when someone, someone is actually giving us good information and they actually do have our best interests in mind. The markers of a good fitness influencer is someone who's qualified, who cites their sources, and it's legitimate sources. Someone who seeks the scientific facts and they prioritize science-based information over social clout, but also check their content history, check someone's content history, what kind of content are they putting out there? Is the majority of it click clickbait stuff to go viral, or is the majority of it actually like, Hey, this is actually good information.
(44:10)
Are they actually putting something out there that's helpful? Is the majority of what they put out there helpful and also pay attention to how they handle criticism? I think that that's a really big, either it could be a green flag or a red flag if someone calls them out, how do they respond is a really good way to tell whether you're dealing with a shit flu or someone who actually knows their stuff or is a worthwhile good actor who's trying to actually do good. So we all make mistakes. We all say the wrong thing sometimes. We all also sometimes need to update our knowledge as a coach taking continuing education unit classes all the time to update my knowledge. There are some things that I in the past have taught that I've even talked about on stream that are no longer really backed by the science things that I've had to update in how I coach people.
(45:10)
Good example of this is the rice versus meat protocol for injury, right? Because for many, many years when I was coming up as an athlete, when you got injured, if you sprained your ankle or if you pulled a muscle, the protocol was rice, rest, ice compression, elevation. But nowadays, more and more physical therapists and exercise physiologists, doctors are recommending meat, MEAT, which is to actually promote and speed up healing for a minor injury like that. What you actually need to do is keep it moving. M moving exercise. Once you're able to exercise, you should stay exercising. Even if you have to exercise around the affected joint, you should still get exercise activity. No, I'm sorry, analgesic. Analgesic. So if you need to reduce the swelling, you can eat foods that are anti-inflammatory like turmeric, lots of garlic, onion, that kind of thing. And if you have it's unbearable, then you can take an over the counter.
(46:19)
If your doctor says that it's right for you, EAM, then T is treatment. So a lot of minor injuries and sprains that happen during training or just in everyday life, they get better on their own, but sometimes you need extra treatment. Go to physical therapy. A lot of chiropractors are also now doing physical therapy, which is a cool development. So that's what's actually recommended now, and I was actually corrected and called out by somebody in the community here on Twitch about recommending rice, and instead he recommended offering or recommending meat, and also followed up with some sources that I could read to update my knowledge. So that's a perfect example of something that I've had to update. Another thing more recently is I've stopped teaching the Pilates imprint as a way to brace the core and practicing that at the beginning of resistance training. That has come as a result of having taught the imprint, and it has in some ways helped people to learn where their abs are and how brace their core.
(47:30)
On the other hand though, a lot of people who are imprinting when they hold that position while they're doing abdominal exercises like dead bugs or leg drops, it actually causes strain in their backs. And so I've gone through, I've researched it and from multiple sources, chiropractors, physical therapists, and other experts, going back and doing the research and talking to these people and reading what they've written about the topic, decided to stop teaching the imprint instead and teaching people how to brace in different ways. So that's a very recent update to what I offer, and that's always going to be the case. There will probably be things 10 years from now that I will have to teach differently.
(48:26)
All that to say, if you're dealing with somebody who's not a shit influencer, who actually is worth listening to, they're somebody who can handle criticism and who also is willing to have a growth mindset and grow beyond what they maybe currently teach or what they used to teach and what they used to say. If they can engage in good faith debate, if they can engage in good faith knowledge exchange, if they're willing to be wrong, if they're willing to be seen as wrong, and then change and update what they think, that's a sign that the person that you're following may actually be somebody worth listening to. But a shitty influencer, a shit influencer is probably going to respond a lot more like a narcissist, right? Narcissists hate to be seen as wrong. They want to be seen as an expert, and that is more important to them than actually giving good information.
(49:28)
So if you get this sense that their whole focus is being seen in a certain way versus actually giving good information, that's a good sign that this is somebody that you probably shouldn't be listening to. So I wanted to talk about that with you guys because I think I've been in this space, I've been streaming on Twitch for five years or more now, and my other platforms have grown. My YouTube channel is growing, and there have been a lot of shifts in the fitness influencing space, and there will be more changes that come along. Social media is just like fashion. There are cycles where certain things come into fashion and certain things that we said back in the eighties, and then we're like, oh, we learned like, oh, that's not a good idea. And then maybe five years from now, new young influencers will probably start saying that kind of thing again, and we'll have to do a bunch of myth busting around it.
(50:30)
That is kind of the nature of the beast. Whenever there is a free exchange of information, there's always going to be bad actors who are going to be, they're going to have their own ulterior motives. They want to be seen and they want clout, and they want money from sponsorships and engagement, and that's more important to them than actually giving good information and helping you along your fitness journey. I will say the type of people when I'm just interacting with someone's content and I'm trying to get a sense of the type of person that I'm dealing with is, and I have a pretty good strong pattern recognition in certain ways of people behaving, in my sense, I get a general sense of someone being a good influence versus influencer. A good influence someone to actually listen to is do they have a teacher vibe to them? Do they have a nerd vibe about them? Are they passionate about the thing that they're talking about? Do they have a passion for sharing knowledge about that thing, talking about that thing, someone who has a passion for the thing versus is more interested in attention. I look for people who have a good vibe of being a teacher. They want to share information. They love what they're sharing. They love to talk about the thing that they're talking about, and they also have the resources to back it up.
(52:06)
And they also refer to authorities. They respect the authority of other researchers, like peer reviewed studies of scientific organizations. Someone who's more on the narcissistic side is going to be, they don't want the spotlight on anybody else but themselves. They want to be seen as the expert, the center of attention. So just be careful if you get that kind of vibe from people. And it is hard sometimes to tell. I mean, there've been people who've come out to be really horrible people that you hear these terrible stories about that you're like, oh, wow, I didn't see that coming. It's human nature, and it's part of the experience of being human to kind of be tricked by people who don't actually have good or have your interests at heart. But these are hopefully some tips that will help you to kind of sift through the bad actors that are out there and prevent yourself from getting into a scam or some kind of a pipeline that ends up hurting you or someone else. So yeah, I hope that you found that helpful.
(53:20)
Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I hope that you found this conversation to be helpful in sifting through good and bad fitness influencers in the online world. I'm curious to know if you have your own criteria for knowing whether you're dealing with a scam artist or someone who's just giving bad information. Leave that in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube, and make sure that you have subscribed to the channel if you're here on YouTube or that you have followed the channel if you're listening to the podcast. I look forward to hanging out with you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 52: 5 Signs Ego-Lifting is Killing Your Gains
When it comes to making progress in the gym, lifting heavier weights is often seen as the gold standard. But what if your obsession with stacking plates is actually holding you back? Enter ego lifting—a common but destructive habit that can stall progress, increase injury risk, and keep you from reaching your true potential. In this post, we’ll break down what ego lifting is, how to recognize it, where it stems from, and how to break free from it.
When it comes to making progress in the gym, lifting heavier weights is often seen as the gold standard. But what if your obsession with stacking plates is actually holding you back? Enter ego lifting—a common but destructive habit that can stall progress, increase injury risk, and keep you from reaching your true potential. In this post, we’ll break down what ego lifting is, how to recognize it, where it stems from, and how to break free from it.
What is Ego Lifting?
Ego lifting refers to lifting weights that are too heavy for you to maintain proper form, often to impress others or boost your self-esteem.
Instead of focusing on controlled, effective reps, ego lifters prioritize moving as much weight as possible—often at the cost of proper technique.
👉 This can lead to poor muscle activation, stalled progress, and an increased risk of injury.
Common examples of ego lifting include:
Performing half-rep squats with excessive weight.
Bouncing the bar off your chest in the bench press.
Using momentum to swing dumbbells instead of controlling them.
Deadlifting with a rounded back to move more weight.
Signs You May Be Ego Lifting
Not sure if you’re guilty of ego lifting? Here are some common signs:
You avoid warm-ups or mobility work. If you think warming up with lighter weights is a waste of time, you might be prioritizing numbers over performance.
You judge your progress solely by the weight on the bar. Strength is about more than just lifting heavier—it’s also about control, endurance, and muscle engagement.
You experience frequent injuries or stalled progress. If you’re constantly battling aches and pains or your numbers aren’t improving, ego lifting could be the culprit.
Your form breaks down at heavy weights. If you’re sacrificing technique just to complete a rep, you’re not lifting effectively.
You get defensive when someone corrects your form. If you bristle at constructive criticism, you might be lifting for validation rather than progress.
Where Does Ego Lifting Come From?
Understanding why we fall into the trap of ego lifting is key to overcoming it. Here are some common sources:
Gym Culture & Social Media Pressure – Watching others lift heavy can make you feel like you need to match them, even if your form suffers.
Misconceptions About Strength Training – Some believe that lifting heavy at all costs is the only way to get stronger, ignoring the importance of proper progression, technique, and time under tension.
Insecurity & Validation Seeking – Many lifters use heavy weights as a way to prove their strength, sometimes at the expense of actual progress.
How to Break Out of the Ego Lifting Mindset
If you recognize that ego lifting is holding you back, here’s how to shift your mindset and start making real progress:
Redefine Success – Instead of focusing on weight alone, measure progress in terms of endurance, stability, and overall strength development.
Prioritize Form Over Weight – A controlled, full-range rep with lighter weight is far more effective than a sloppy, heavy rep.
Use Progressive Overload Properly – Strength gains come from gradual increases, not jumping to the heaviest weight possible.
Film Your Lifts – Reviewing your technique can help you stay accountable and make adjustments where needed.
Surround Yourself with the Right Mindset – Train with people who value proper technique and longevity over lifting heavy for show.
Final Thoughts
Ego lifting is a trap that can derail your progress, increase injury risk, and keep you from reaching your full potential. By shifting your focus from lifting the heaviest weights to lifting with proper form and progression, you’ll build a stronger, healthier, and more resilient body. So next time you hit the gym, ask yourself: are you lifting to improve, or just to impress?
Links:
Sponsors/Affiliate Links:
Legion Athletics Supplements: Use code Jaydigains to get 20% off for new customers - Double loyalty points for returning customers)
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Jayd (00:00):
Strength is more than just being able to lift heavier. It's just as much about having the control of your body and being able to control the weight while you're in motion. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I also grew up in the fitness industry. So I created this podcast to share some of the tips and wisdom that I share with my personal training clients and followers. In today's episode, we're going to take a look at whether or not ego lifting may be killing your gains. Ego lifting refers to trying to lift heavier weight than what you can actually control with good technique, usually with the intention of trying to impress other people or to boost your own self-esteem. Instead of focusing on controlled, effective reps, ego lifters will often prioritize lifting as much weight as possible as quickly as possible, often at the cost of proper technique.
(01:08)
Now, lifting this weight can lead to poor muscle activation. You're not going to get the gains that you would get through actually practicing slow controlled effective reps, which means that you'll likely experience stalled progress and even increased risk of injury. So today we're going to take a look at how to figure out if you might be ego lifting, and I'm going to give you some tips on how to reframe your mindsets so that you can practice your lifts effectively and with control to be safer about it and to make more progress. But before we get into the episode, make sure to give this video like if you're watching this on YouTube, and make sure to subscribe to the channel so that you always get the latest episodes and videos that I drop. I post pretty frequently on my YouTube channel, different exercise tutorial videos, as well as discussion videos just like this.
(01:58)
So never miss a video by making sure that you are subscribed. If you're listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure to follow the show so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. If you would like more information on me and the services that I offer, check out my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com. Right now, I am accepting new personal training clients and my body sculpt program, and you can also sign up for my membership right from my website where you can download workout plans, meal plans, and get training tips, nutrition tips, fat loss tips, and other recipes every single month. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:43)
Ego lifting is one of the most common problems that I see in personal training clients, especially when they come to me with previous experience of lifting. As a reminder, ego lifting is when you try to exercise with more weight than what you can effectively control or execute with good technique. Lifting this way is really not optimal. You only want to train with the amount of weight that you can properly control. Not only does it mean that you will likely sacrifice some gains and stall your progress. In the worst cases, it often leads to injury. Common examples of ego lifting include performing half rep squats with excessive weight. If you are squatting with an amount of weight that you can't execute a proper squat, getting your thighs to parallel. If your mobility allows, then you're using way too much weight. Another example of ego lifting might be bouncing the bar off of your chest while you're doing a chest press.
(03:40)
Rather than allowing your muscles to generate the force to push the weight back up. In bodybuilding exercises, you may be swinging the weights around using momentum to get them up rather than generating the force with your muscles and also deadlift with a rounded spine. Basically, if you cannot perform the exercise slow and controlled with good technique throughout the entire range of motion, you should not be lifting that weight. Now, ego lifting can sneak up on even the best of us, even the most experienced and advanced exercises. We'll get into a habit of ego lifting from time to time. It's a good idea if you can pinpoint this starting to seep in early on so that you can adjust your mindset before it ends up getting you hurt. Now, if you're not sure whether or not you might be ego lifting, here are a few signs that you can look out for.
(04:30)
One, you tend to avoid warmups and mobility work. You might feel like warming up with lighter weights is a waste of time. Doing mobility work is a waste of time, and you may be prioritizing numbers like the weight on the bar or the number of reps over how you perform those reps. You may also begin to judge your progress solely by the amount of weight that you put on the bar. Strength is more than just being able to lift heavier. It's just as much about having the control of your body and being able to control the weight while you're in motion. It's also about your range of motion. Being able to manage a certain amount of weight in a deeper squat, for instance, getting more muscle engagement. All of these are really important parts of your progression as an athlete, as a lifter, if you have been ego lifting for an extended period of time, you may notice that you're getting a lot of minor aches and pains or chronic injuries popping up.
(05:35)
This might be happening pretty frequently. While at the same time your lifts aren't actually improving. You're kind of stalling in your progress. So if you're getting a lot of aches and pains and you're not really actually progressing, this is a good sign that you may be ego lifting. You may also notice that your form begins to break down as you add more weight onto the bar. If this happens a lot in your training sessions that you're practicing with poor technique but heavier weights on the bar, that's a good sign that you're ego lifting. And finally, if you get defensive when someone corrects your form or if they tell you to slow down, this is a good sign that you are ego lifting and that you're prioritizing the amount of weight on the bar over how in control you are of that weight. This means that you are more concerned with the validation of how much weight you put on the bar versus prioritizing progress over time.
(06:33)
Like I said, ego lifting can seep into your mindset no matter who you are, whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or an advanced lifter. I find however, that ego lifting is more often a problem with people who participate in certain gym cultures where you go to a gym and you can just kind of tell that there's sort of this competitive atmosphere, and this isn't every gym, but there definitely are some gyms that have a culture of competition where people regularly are putting more weight on the bar than they probably should, where their form failure is breaking down. You want to surround yourself with gym buddies that prioritize progress in terms of improved technique and control mobility, as well as how much weight is actually on the bar. It can also come from social media pressure, which is another aspect of who are you spending your time with.
(07:28)
If you are consuming a lot of social media where people are moving really crazy weights, this can sometimes lead to you kind of comparing yourself where you are in your journey to them and make you feel like you should be doing that, where you begin to rush yourself to add more and more weight to catch up with them, when really you should be focusing on your own journey and progressing one step at a time from where you currently are. Now, ego lifting can also come from misconceptions about what strength training is. Many people believe that strength training is all about always adding on more and more and more weight to the bar, which makes sense given that many of the competitive weight training competitions are really focused on how much weight you put on the bar, but true strength progression is about growth in your ability to control your body, to be able to command your muscles, to generate maximal force in a way that is safe and keeps your body in alignment.
(08:31)
For me, it's more impressive to see someone perform a squat with really good technique, but less weight than someone who performs a soup or heavy squat with really crappy technique. Form really should be your focus, improving your form and your technique at every stage of your journey and being able to execute each exercise with good technique, no matter much weight you put on the bar. Ego lifting can also set in due to personal insecurities or maybe you're seeking validation from the outside. Many people come to strength training because they feel like it's a way that they can prove themselves to somebody else or to themselves, and when you're super concerned with that validation or boosting your self-esteem can often lead to putting more pressure on yourself to add more weight to the bar than what you actually should. Now I'll be honest, the worst ego lifters that I've had to work with as a personal trainer often come from two main places.
(09:35)
One of those places is high school weight rooms. Whether you took weight training classes in high school or if you lifted with your football team, high school weight training classes and weight training groups often have that culture of competition of continue to put more and more and more weight on the bar and they don't spend as much time on proper technique and executing the exercises properly with good form. Many of the ex high school weight room students that I train really struggle with performing the exercises slowly and with good technique, and when you force them to slow down, a lot of times their form breaks down. They might be really strong at one range of motion within the squat, but if you force them to pause at another point in the squat, they fall over because they haven't had the chance to develop the balance in the control through the entire range of motion because maybe their gym group or their coach prioritized moving the weight as fast and explosively as possible.
(10:37)
Oftentimes, these people experience chronic injuries, and it's not until they work with me and we kind of reframe how to do strength training and how to do workouts in the gym, and they learn how to perform with good technique and prioritize good technique that they begin to actually make really crazy gains, but it often does require bumping back the amount of weight that they put on the bar and slowing things down for a period of time so that they can learn how to actually execute with good technique. Once they master that technique though, oh my goodness, it's PR after pr. I know another place that I get a lot of ego lifters from is the Starting Strength Program. This is a program that's created by Mark rto. It's one of the most well-known beginners strength training programs. It focuses specifically on just barbell training and progressive overload.
(11:29)
Within this program, lifters are encouraged to add weight on the bar every week of the program. Every time you go to do the same exercise, you should be adding on more weight. Now, there's not a lot of focus on mobility work or other accessories. There's not much discussion on how to modify exercises for your body type because there are different recommendations for people who have longer femurs or differently sized limbs, et cetera. Another problem that I have with this program is that the people who go through it often rush through their reps and they really struggle to work on an accumulation phase or mobility work or balance work, which is a necessary foundation for actually being in control of big weight. And this program often sets people up with the expectation that every time they lift, they should be adding on more weight to the bar, which is very unrealistic and not necessary for making gains.
(12:29)
So when one of these students comes to work with me and I start to acclimate them to block periodization where we have accumulation phases, intensification phases, and peaking blocks, they really struggle to do the foundational work necessary to establish good technique because they just don't value it. They also have a really hard time doing cardio because cardiovascular training is not really a part of the Starting Strength program, and it is actually another really important piece of being overall athletic and improving your strength. A strong cardiovascular system is really important for delivering oxygen to your muscles and helping you in the recovery process. So often what happens with these clients is they really struggle to stay consistent with their program because it's just not as fun to train effectively as adding more weight onto the bar every single week. And sometimes you can just start to kind of get into an ego lifting mindset because you might be feeling insecure and you feel like you have to prove something.
(13:29)
It happens to everybody at some point in their fitness journey. So let's talk about how to break out of the ego lifting mindset. If you recognize that ego lifting may be holding you back, there are a couple of things that you can do to help change the trajectory of your workouts, and it's definitely worth doing this because this will allow you to actually make gains, make progress, and perform your workouts more safely to avoid injury. One is that you need to sit down and redefine what success means to you. Instead of focusing on weight alone, the amount of weight that you put on the bar define success and improvement by improvements in your endurance, improvements in your stability, your overall strength development, your mobility, how in control you are of that weight, how long you can hold different points of the movement. All of these are great indications of progress.
(14:30)
Number two is to prioritize form over weight. It's not just about how much weight you have on the bar, it's about how in control you are of that weight at all points of the exercise. A controlled full range rep with lighter weight is hella more impressive than a sloppy, fast heavy rep. You also need to establish an idea of what proper progression is. Strength gains come from gradual increases of the weight over time, and also strength improves as you also improve your balance, your overall coordination, your muscular endurance and work capacity. If you don't focus on improving these aspects of your muscular fitness, then you're not going to be able to improve your strength. Strength is built on top of the foundation of hypertrophy, muscular endurance, proper technique work, working with time under tension. If you're not putting in the effort to execute these exercises with proper technique, more time under tension and building muscle while also improving your mobility, then you are going to stall and probably get injured.
(15:43)
Once you get to that intermediate and advanced stage of being a lifter, just know that your progress is going to be a lot slower than what it was in the beginning. When you are a beginner and you have those newbie gains, you can more realistically expect to add more weight onto the bar on a week by week basis, but that's not realistic for an intermediate or advanced lifter. Progress is a lot slower at that point, and that's why we focus our training in different blocks that work on improving different aspects of your muscular fitness because that's what it really takes in order to move the needle on your strength. Another thing that can help you get out of the ego lifting mindset is to film your lifts. Review your technique every single time you lift regardless of the lift, regardless of the phase of your training, review your lifts, and if you're working with a coach, send your coach those videos so that they can give you form feedback and prioritize improving your form over time and make that your focus over how much weight is on the bar. And lastly, make sure that you're surrounding yourself with people who have the right mindset. If you are within a culture, whether it's online or in an actual gym, make sure that you are spending your time with people who prioritize control and good technique over just slapping more weight on the bar. So there you have it. These are the ways that you can identify whether ego lifting has seeped into your mindset, and these are some tips for helping you to break out of that mindset.
(17:23)
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you found this discussion to be helpful. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you're watching this on YouTube, let me know in the comments what your experience has been with ego lifting. Is it something that you have recognized in yourself and what helped you to break out of that mindset? Or are you currently struggling with that mindset and what questions do you have about it? Leave those all in the comments below the video. Also, make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel so that you always get the latest videos whenever they drop. If you're listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the show so you always get the latest episodes. If you would like more information on me and the services that I offer, head over to my website, Jaydigains.com. I am accepting clients right now for my bodys sculpt program, so you can find more information on that at my website. That's Jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N s.com. Thank you again for watching or listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 51: How to Get Strong With Block Periodization
In this episode of The Coaching Corner Podcast, I break down the concept of block periodization and why it’s essential for intermediate and advanced lifters looking to keep making progress. I explore the four key aspects of muscular fitness—strength, hypertrophy, endurance, and power—and explain how structuring training into focused blocks can maximize results.
Want to break through plateaus and keep making progress in the gym? In this episode, I break down block periodization and how it can help you maximize strength, muscle growth, endurance, and power.
I’ll walk you through:
✅ The four key aspects of muscular fitness
✅ The three phases of block periodization (accumulation, intensification, realization)
✅ The best rep ranges, weights, and rest periods for each phase
✅ My top tips for warm-ups, core stabilization, and mobility work
If you're serious about strength training and want a smarter, more effective way to program your workouts, this episode is for you!
🔗 Resources & Links:
🎯 Tune in next week for more expert tips to help you crush your fitness goals!
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Jayd (00:00):
As you become a more intermediate or advanced exerciser, that's when your progress begins to slow down and in order to continue to make significant progress as an intermediate or an advanced exerciser, it's a really good idea to focus your training on one or a couple of specific adaptations at a time in order to make gains and make a dramatic difference in your strength levels. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I also grew up in the fitness industry, so I've created this podcast to share some of the tips, tricks, and wisdom that I share with my own personal training clients. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to get strong and how to think about planning your workouts. According to block periodization, I'm going to give recommendations for how much weight you should use, how many reps to do in each set, and how long to rest between your sets in each different type of block. If you're interested in working with me as your one-on-one online coach, check out my website. I am accepting new clients to my body, sculpt and at home training programs. You can find information for those on my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N-S.com. And without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:37)
One of the most effective ways to organize your training in order to get strong and improve your strength is to use what's called block periodization. When you first start your fitness journey or when you first start lifting weights, you can make a lot of progress really, really quickly and improve all aspects of your muscular strength in a relatively short period of time. We call this newbie gains, and you can experience newbie gains for anywhere from the first six months to the first two years of your training. When you are in the newbie gains phase, you're often able to do more reps, add more weight, get faster, and improve your technique really, really quickly, and see huge jumps in progress. But as you become a more intermediate or advanced exerciser, that's when your progress begins to slow down and in order to continue to make significant progress as an intermediate or an advanced exerciser, it's a really good idea to focus your training on one or a couple of specific adaptations at a time and order to make gains and make a dramatic difference in your strength levels.
(02:49)
So there are four main aspects of your muscular fitness and strength is one of them. Strength is technically defined as the ability of your muscles to generate force, and this is usually measured in terms of how much weight you can lift, push or pull, but this is one of four main aspects of muscular fitness that you want to work on developing in order to have a well-rounded physique and to be actually overall strong. Hypertrophy is another aspect of strength, which refers specifically to your muscle size. So our muscles are actually made up of really long, very thin strands of tissue, almost like a bundle of hair, right? So a muscle is a bundle of these individual fibers, and in order to be able to push, pull, lift heavier weight, these fibers have to be strong, and often that means that they need to get a little bit bigger.
(03:47)
So when you work towards hypertrophy, you work on actually increasing the size of those individual fibers so that they can handle more tension. Another aspect of muscular fitness is endurance, which involves your muscle's ability to contract over and over and over again over an extended period of time or to hold a contraction and hold tension for an extended period of time. And finally, you have power. Muscular power is strength, namely how much force your muscles can generate, but it also gives a factor of how fast you can generate that force. Now all four of these aspects of muscular fitness are important to develop in order to be strong, and it's important to develop them in order to safely be able to train the way that you need to train in order to lift more weight. Now, like I said before, if you're a beginner and you're in that new be gains phase, all four of these aspects of your fitness are going to improve no matter what you do.
(04:42)
But as your body adapts to training and as you become more intermediate or advanced, you are going to need to focus your training in order to make significant gains in any of these aspects. So for this reason, most intermediate and advanced lifters, especially if they're interested in strength, are going to separate their training into different blocks where they focus on one or a couple of different aspects of their muscular fitness developing the different aspects of their muscular fitness will overall accumulate towards them. In the end being able to lift more weight. So the standard block periodization format that we tend to follow is a format of three different main phases or blocks. First, you have your accumulation phase or an accumulation block. Then you have your intensification phase or intensification block, and then you follow that up with a realization or peaking block. The accumulation phase is all about accumulating the skills, the muscle mass, the technique, the mobility that's necessary as a foundation for moving big weight during the intensification block.
(05:56)
Then you start to acclimate your body to lifting progressively heavier and heavier weights while also continuing to condition your body with hypertrophy, endurance, mobility. And then finally in the peaking or realization block, that's when you bring the overall volume of your training down to focus exclusively on moving big weight. At the end of a peaking block, people will often retest their maxes, either their one rep maxes or they'll do a three rep max or five rep max, and then use that number as an estimation of their one rep max. For each of these different phases, you're going to use a percentage of whatever your previous max is, whatever your previous one rep max is, and you're going to use that as a baseline to decide what weight to use in different parts of the training. So let's get a little bit more into detail of these three different phases or blocks of training.
(06:50)
So first is your accumulation phase. Now if you're a beginner lifter, your accumulation phase is going to be a lot longer because you have a lot more skills and strength and mobility that you need to accumulate. But if you are more in intermediate or advanced, your accumulation block might last somewhere between three and six weeks, or it may be even longer if you have something specific that you're trying to develop during the accumulation phase. Volume is the name of the game when it comes to your big lifts, and by big lifts I mean your squat, bench, deadlift, overhead press, and other compound movements. So in terms of volume we are going to be working with is about 60% to 75% of your previous one rep max are your estimated one rep max. You're usually going to be working with higher reps in each of your sets, so somewhere between six and 12 reps.
(07:39)
I also have seen plenty of programs that do as many as 20 reps per set depending on what adaptation the program is specifically trying to get you to develop higher reps means more time at tension for your muscles, which going to lead a lot more buildup to lactic acid in the muscles and burning sensation, which is all great for developing hypertrophy. It's also really important to train this way in order to develop your muscular endurance and your overall work capacity. This will allow you to train the way that you need to train in the later intensification phase to actually make strength gains In the accumulation phase. You're also going to be working on mobility exercises so that you can get deeper into your squat. You're also going to slow the movements down so you have more time under tension, but also so that you can ensure that you are in total control of the weight throughout the entire movement.
(08:33)
So often in an accumulation block, I'm going to include a lot of tempo reps in my squats, bench deadlift, overhead press. I'm going to slow the movements down, and I'm also going to add some different pauses at different points in the movement to help my clients to develop their sticking points, work on their balance and ensure that they are totally in control of a weight before we progress that weight and add more. So a typical workout structure for an accumulation block would include some kind of cardiovascular warmup for five to 10 minutes, followed by dynamic stretches, which is always going to be the warmup for any block of any training that I do. And then there's going to be some kind of a core stabilizing sequence to fire up the core so that you can brace. And then you're going to probably have some priming exercises that are specific to your mobility issues, maybe help you to develop some balance, help you to correct muscular imbalances, and then you'll actually have your main strength training exercises, which will include one of your compound lifts or more, and then also some accessories In an accumulation phase, because the focus is high volume and hypertrophy, you're also likely going to see some isolation exercises like you would in a bodybuilding program.
(09:47)
For instance, I might put bicep curls in a bench day to help a client to develop their biceps so that they can better control the eccentric portion of their bench press, and I might also have them do tricep kickbacks so that their triceps are stronger so that they can lock out at the top of the bench. Rest periods are going to be a little bit shorter here, anywhere between 30 seconds to 90 seconds because the goal is to keep your muscles under tension for a longer period of time. Your goal is to go into each successive set of an exercise on a muscle group, less recovered so that you can accumulate that lactic acid and build muscle. An accumulation phase can really be an extended period of time as much as a year. However, if you are going to be doing a longer extended accumulation phase, I recommend breaking that phase up into multiple accumulation blocks.
(10:37)
This is what I typically do for my strength programs. I like to have my clients do at least two accumulation blocks before we begin to work into intensification. Now, your intensification workouts are going to include a lot of hypertrophy and endurance focused exercises just like the accumulation block. But in terms of your compound lifts, you're going to be working with progressively heavier weight and fewer reps per set. The goal of the intensification block is to gear you up towards being able to lift heavier weight so that when it comes to the realization or peaking block, you have the ability to push a lot of weight. So for this, you're going to be working for between 75 and 90% of your previous one rep max. The reps percent are going to be about three to six reps, and you're usually going to be doing a moderate to high number of sets, like three to four rest period is going to be a little bit longer for your compound lifts here in order to give your muscles the time to recuperate, rebuild a TP so that you can push as many reps as you can in each successive set at a higher rate.
(11:41)
Outside of the compound lifts, you're probably still going to be doing a lot of mobility work or hypertrophy work for other exercises. You still might be developing different muscle groups that are lagging behind, and you still probably include conditioning exercises that push your cardiovascular and muscular endurance. So this space can last anywhere between four and six weeks. But usually I'm not going to have my clients do this kind of a phase for very long. It is a lot of wear and tear on the body to be in an intensification block. So I typically don't have my clients in it for more than four to six weeks at a time. I'm also going to likely have them do a deload either before or after their intensification block. This allows the body the time to catch up with the recovery that maybe it wasn't able to heap up with during the accumulation block or during the intensification block.
(12:29)
It's not uncommon to feel like super, super tired and fatigued at the end of an intensification block because the point of intensification is to be intense, is to condition your body, get you ready to push big weight. In the realization or peaking phase, you're going to gradually taper off the amount of volume that you're doing so that you're not fatiguing the body as much while at the same time you increase the amount of weight that you're using for your compound lifts. You're usually going to be lifting between 85 and 95% of your previous one rep max for short sets of between one and three reps per set. Your rest periods here are recommended to be a lot longer between two and five minutes. That way, you are completely fresh and ready to rock with each successive heavy lift. The goal and focus of this realization or peaking block is to put all of the stuff that you've accumulated, all of the muscle, all of the hypertrophy, all of the skills, the mobility, all of that to work and training your muscles to work at the same time in the right order, firing up to push as much force as possible while also keeping good technique and keeping your body in alignment.
(13:44)
Now, the realization or peaking phase really should be the shortest. I don't like to have my clients in this kind of a phase for longer than three to four weeks because after a certain amount of time, without the stimulus of higher volume training, you can start to lose muscle and therefore you'll start to see a dip in your strength. So a really successful peaking block is about hitting a sweet spot where you are still able to push a maximum amount of force while not overly fatiguing your body. But in order to continue to keep muscle and build muscle, you do have to fatigue the body. So that's why most of the time lifters are in an accumulation or an intensification block because it's the actual stimulus of fatiguing the muscles that makes you get stronger over time. So it's not just about always lifting heavier and heavier and heavier weights.
(14:32)
Most of the time experienced lifters will be trying to build more muscle, trying to develop their overall control and mobility, increase their range of motion, and give their muscles the stimulus that they need to grow. That way they can actually eventually put more weight on the bar during a later peaking phase. Now, you don't necessarily even have to do a peaking block. You can just go right into a deload and then start back over with accumulation. The peaking block is kind of optional, and it's usually there to help gear you up towards testing your one rep maxes. Or if you plan on competing like in a power lifting competition, a peaking block can be helpful to prepare you for that. But a lot of people who don't compete will kind of just alternate between accumulation and intensification blocks, or they might just do an extended period of time where they just do multiple accumulation blocks successively.
(15:25)
But if you are trying to test your maxes or increase your maxes, this is a great format to follow, to build skills, build the muscle, and prepare your body for pushing or pulling more weight. Now, keep in mind that some intermediate and advanced programs are going to use the block periodization in a kind of different philosophy. For example, a juggernaut training systems based program that my coach wrote for me actually separated out my training into month long waves that included a week long accumulation block, a week long intensification block, and a week long peaking block followed by a week long, and then we just restarted with the next wave that way. Some programs also have what's called daily undulating periodization, where each day each workout day focuses on a different adaptation. So there are many ways to organize your workouts, and you might see intermediate and advanced programs that kind of play with the concepts of accumulation, intensification and realization. But there's also nothing wrong with sticking to the standard recommendations of working for three weeks at least in an accumulation block, followed by an intensification block, and then finishing off with peaking. So there you have it. Block periodization is a way that you can organize your workouts in order to maximize your strength gains progress in a way that's safe for your body, so that you can lift more weight and be more in control of that weight over time.
(17:02)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner Podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I hope that you found this discussion helpful in thinking about how to plan out your workouts so that you can get stronger over time. Now, let me know what questions you have. You can leave them in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube. If you are watching on YouTube, make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel so that you always get the latest videos whenever I drop them. If you are listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you followed the show so that you get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. If you're interested in working with me, I am taking on clients right now. Check out my website, Jaydigains.com. For more information on my programs, you can subscribe to my membership site to download and follow my strength training program, the one that I'm doing actually right now, or you can build muscle with me with one of the other downloadable programs. I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
Subscribe for Updates ✉️
Sign up to get notified whenever new episodes drop. Opt in for more tips on training, fat loss, and nutrition by filling out the form below:
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Episode 50: The 7 Exercises You Should Be Doing
In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I sit down with my friend and fellow content creator, Kris Lee (aka Terrible Hime), to talk about the ins and outs of planning for a successful fat loss phase. Kris shares her personal experiences, discussing the mental and physical preparation needed, how to set realistic goals, and how to manage calorie intake effectively.
We also cover the importance of self-awareness, setting boundaries, and creating a supportive environment. Fat loss isn’t just about numbers—it’s about mindset, habits, and sustainability. If you’re in a fat loss phase or considering one, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you stay on track.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ How to mentally and physically prepare for a fat loss phase
✅ The impact of social interactions on fat loss progress
✅ Managing the mental fatigue of calorie deficits
✅ Why boundaries and self-care are essential for long-term success
✅ The role of hobbies and stress management in achieving fitness goals
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast.
In this episode, I’m breaking down the seven essential movement patterns that should be part of your weekly workout routine. Whether you're training for aesthetics, strength, or overall functionality, these fundamental exercises will help you build muscle, improve posture, and move better in everyday life.
I’ll cover:
✔️ Why these movement patterns are the foundation of any effective training program
✔️ How they support strength, muscle growth, and injury prevention
✔️ Exercise examples for pushing, pulling, hinging, squatting, pressing, and rotation
✔️ How to modify movements based on your fitness level
👉 Download my training programs at Jaydigains.com
👉 Join my monthly membership for exclusive workouts & programming
🎧 Tune in now & subscribe for more expert fitness tips!
🔗 Resources & Links:
🎯 Tune in next week for more expert tips to help you crush your fitness goals!
-
Jayd (00:00):
If you're working out for aesthetics or bodybuilding, these seven basic movement patterns will also help you to build muscle and look more aesthetic because by covering all of these basic movement patterns, you're essentially going to be hitting all of the major muscles in the entire body. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I grew up in the fitness industry, so I created this podcast to help share some of the tips and tricks that I share with my personal training clients and students. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about seven exercises that you absolutely should be including in your weekly training routine. These seven exercises will help you to get better at basic movement patterns like pushing, pulling, twisting, hip, hinging, squatting. Now, not only are these based on basic movement patterns that you use in your everyday life, but practicing these movements will help to increase your overall strength, strengthen your bones, and improve your posture, and that's why these movement patterns form the basis of all of the training programs that I create for my clients and my subscribers.
(01:18)
Keep in mind that I do have downloadable training programs that you can download and follow along with on my website at Jaydigains.com. You can also subscribe from my monthly membership where I post workouts of the month, including these exercises. And before we get into the episode, make sure to give this video a like and subscribe to the channel for more updates whenever I drop new podcast episodes and videos if you're watching on YouTube. And if you are listening to this podcast, make sure to follow the channels that you always get the latest episodes. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:57)
Now. Today we're going to be talking about the seven basic exercises that you should include in your training program, and we're talking specifically about resistance training here, but these basic movement patterns can also appear in other styles of training, like if you're doing cardio circuits or if you are doing some mobility work. These seven exercises are the basic movement patterns of the human body, and practicing them regularly will help you to move better in your everyday life. It will also improve your overall control and strength, and it will also improve your posture and alignment if you're working out for aesthetics or bodybuilding. These seven basic movement patterns will also help you to build muscle and look more aesthetic because by covering all of these basic movement patterns, you're essentially going to be hitting all of the major muscles in the entire body regardless of whether you are working out as a beginner, intermediate, or advanced exerciser.
(02:53)
All seven of these movement patterns should be in your workout program every week. So let's take a look at them. Now. First up is the push movement pattern. This is the basic movement pattern that you use when you perform exercises like pushups, planks, chest presses. In an everyday life, you might actually use this movement pattern if you are moving furniture or pushing yourself up off the ground. The major muscle groups that are involved with push strength are the pecs or pectoralis major muscles. That's your muscles in your chest as well as your triceps, the muscles in the back of your arms that are responsible for elbow extension and your shoulders or deltoid muscles. But you also have to have pretty significant stability in your core to perform push strength exercises. Well, your back muscles also have to engage isometrically to keep you stable as you perform push strength exercises, it's a good idea to include two to three different push exercises in your workout routine every week.
(03:54)
This will help you to practice the movement, but get a variety of stimulus for your muscles. You can do variations of pushups like regular pushups, kneeling pushups, incline pushups, decline pushups, and if you're using weights, you can do dumbbell or barbell chest presses or bench press using a flat bench, or you can also do it as an incline or at a decline to stimulate the muscles a little bit differently. Now, number two, press exercises are like push exercises in the sense that they involve you pushing against resistance away from your body, but instead of straight out in front of you, like the push strength, you're going to be practicing pressing against resistance overhead. This involves a very similar muscle group. It involves the deltoids or the shoulder muscles as well as the triceps, just like with push strength. But press exercises also involve a lot more of the back of the shoulder and upper back muscles like your traps and external shoulder rotator muscles.
(04:55)
Great examples of press exercises include the barbell overhead press or dumbbell shoulder presses, kettlebell shoulder presses, and if you're doing body weight exercises, that would be exercises that are variations of the handstand. Now, practicing press exercises is really important for not only strengthening your shoulders and making your arms look good, but it also helps to improve your posture and improve the health of your shoulders. Because press often involves external rotation of the shoulders. This is a really important movement pattern to practice to keep your shoulders healthy. Many of us work in front of computers or spend a lot of time on our phones where we're kind of rounded forward, and so our shoulders will often have this rounded forward position. But with press exercises, you really kind of have to focus on pushing your chest forward and externally rotating the shoulders in order to push the weight or the resistance overhead.
(05:52)
So this will help to improve your posture and alleviate back pain and shoulder pain by putting your body back in alignment. It is also one of the best expressions of overall total body strength to be able to press weight overhead and hold it there with stability. One of my client's favorite facts about the overhead press is that it is the primary way that in Marvel comics, they measure who among the superheroes is the strongest, and who among the superheroes that is the strongest is the one who can perform the heaviest overhead barbell press. I used to not really like this exercise as much as others because you typically can't use quite as much weight on the bar when you're doing an overhead press as you can for things like deadlifts, squats, and bench press. But it is such a great one for sculpting the shoulders and helping you to improve your overall total body control.
(06:50)
You can perform press exercises from standing or from a seated position with or without back support. Now, seated with back support is going to be the easiest version of an overhead press. The more unstable you can make either your seated position or standing, the more that your core and your other muscles are going to have to work to stabilize. So if you're just getting started with this exercise, I recommend starting from seated with some back support and then progressing up to the point where you can stand. I recommend performing press exercises one to two times per week. Number three, another important movement pattern for the upper body is pulling strength or horizontal rowing. Now this movement pattern is really important for helping you to develop good posture and put your body into alignment. Like I said before, many of us have a habit of rounding our posture forward with our shoulders rounded forward and hunched over.
(07:46)
But practicing a horizontal rowing or pulling is a great way to put your body back in alignment and strengthen the muscles that hold your spine upright. The main movers of this type of exercise are going to be the lats or lattice, his doci muscles as well as your posterior deltoid or the back of your shoulders, as well as your traps and your rhomboids, as well as external shoulder rotator muscles. Your biceps and forearms also will get a significant challenge while you're performing pole based exercises, which will strengthen your overall grip strength, which is a really important part of building overall strength. Great examples of pole strength exercises are cable rows, band rows, and dumbbell or kettlebell rows. You can do these with both hands going at the same time. Or for isolation work, you can do unilateral single arm rows. The angle of your elbow can change which muscles are doing the most work as you're performing your pole based exercises.
(08:48)
In general, the closer your elbow is to your body, the more you're going to be working your lats. The further out your elbow is from your body, the more you're going to be working more of your posterior deltoids and your traps. I recommend including two to three different pole based exercises in your routine every week. Now, in addition to horizontal pulling exercises, it's also important to practice pulling down or vertical pulling. Great ways to practice pulling down are exercises like the wide grip or narrow grip pull downs. You can also do assisted pull-ups where you use either a band or a assisted pull up machine. All of these are great ways to further target your lactus dorsi muscles or lats, as well as the other muscles in your back, like your traps and your rhomboids. Wider grip variations of the pull down will also help you to further develop your posterior deltoid and your external shoulder rotator muscles.
(09:48)
So if you really want to improve your posture and improve the health of your shoulders, pull downs, especially wide grip pull downs or pull-ups are a great option. Doing these types of exercises is really great for physique work and developing a nice wide strong looking back. And by improving your grip strength, you will be better able to perform activities of daily living like carrying heavy objects like groceries. And anytime that you train the muscles in the back, you are setting yourself up for a reduced risk of injury. I recommend including one to two variations of a pulling down motion exercise in your workout routine every week. So we've talked about different movement patterns that you should be focusing on with your upper body, but now let's take a look at lower body movements that are super important for you to practice for developing your overall strength and physique.
(10:42)
The hip hinge is an incredibly important and foundational movement pattern to master as soon as possible when you start to lift the hip, pinch involves flexing your hips or pushing them back behind you, keeping your back straight, and then you bring your hips back forward to a standing position by using your glutes and your hamstrings. Great examples of exercises that incorporate the hip hinge are good mornings using a band or barbell, as well as Romanian deadlifts and stiff like deadlifts. Hip thrusts from a bench are also hip hinge exercises. All of these involve you flexing and extending your hips under resistance. Now, when you're performing any variation of the hip hinge, you need to focus on keeping your back rigid and in alignment by engaging your torso muscles like your abdominals, your obliques, and your erector spina. The primary target muscles of the hip hinge are the gluteus maximus muscles in your bottom, as well as your hamstrings in the back of your thighs and your lower back, your erector spin muscles and your core muscles as well because they have to engage to stabilize your spine.
(11:50)
Mastering this movement will help you to greatly reduce your risk of injury because many people, especially as they get older, develop poor movement patterns when they go to reach down to pick something up from the ground. Having a solid hip hinge where you're using your glutes and you're keeping your back in alignment will help protect your back. When you go to do that, I recommend including some kind of hip hinge exercise in your training program one to two times a week. You can use bands weights, cable machines, and do a variety of exercises like I mentioned before, good mornings, R dls, stiff leg deadlifts and hip thrusts. In addition to developing a solid hip hinge movement pattern, it's also important that you learn how to master the squat. The squat is the basic movement pattern that you use whenever you go to sit down or stand up from something.
(12:41)
In addition to the hip hinge, this movement involves bending the knees and the ankles to lower your body down. And just like with the hip pinch, it's important to perform this exercise while keeping your spine in alignment. So having a solid core is important for this as well. The main muscles involved in performing squats are the quadriceps in the front of your thighs as well as your gluteus maximus muscles in your bottom, as well as your hamstrings. And then your caps and your tibialis anterior muscle along the front of your shin are also important. Here you can perform body weight squats to focus on mastering the form. I also like to give my clients a super band to hold across their shoulders to help cue them to keep their shoulders back and engage their upper back to keep their back straight. As you master this movement pattern, you can make it a little bit harder by adding weight.
(13:30)
I like to start with a goblet squat using a single hand weight or kettlebell in front of the chest, and then progress my clients into dumbbell front squats and eventually over to the barbell where you can perform different variations of the barbell squat, back squats or front squats. The squat is probably the most complicated of these movement patterns, and it usually takes a little bit of time to master it. Here are a couple of tips that I use to help my clients to perform this movement pattern correctly. One is that you want to focus on having your hips, your knees, and your ankles bending at the same time. Now, many people, because they sit in a chair all day for work, tend to have tight hamstrings and calves, and so if you have tightness in the back of your legs, that's going to greatly limit your mobility.
(14:18)
So you may not be able to lower yourself down all the way into a seated position with your thighs parallel to the floor, but that is the position that you want to eventually work towards being able to hold. If you have trouble getting low in the squat without rounding your spine, then you need to focus on developing your ankle mobility, the strengthen your calves, as well as the mobility of your thighs, namely your hamstrings and your quadriceps. Strengthening your back will also help you to be able to keep yourself upright while you're performing this exercise. I recommend taking it slow in the beginning and practicing all of your squats with a slow rate of lowering down for four seconds before pausing at the bottom to make sure that your body's in alignment and balanced. And then coming up for one second, going slow with this movement will help you to ensure that every step of the way as you're lowering your body down into the position, you're keeping your balance, you're using the right muscles, and you're keeping your body in alignment.
(15:17)
It's also a good idea to take a video of yourself performing this exercise from the side so that you can analyze how your ankles, your knees, and your hips are bending if they're going together or if one area is lagging behind the other. As you master the squat exercise, you can make it a little bit more challenging for yourself by performing unilateral squat exercises like Bulgarian split squats or lunges. But focus on mastering the form first and keep in mind that no matter how advanced you get as a lifter, you're always going to need to take some time to focus on your technique. It's very common for even advanced lifters to get some bad habits that slip into their technique here and there, which can greatly limit their ability to lift more and can also lead to risk of injury. So I always recommend taking the reps nice and slow most of the time, train some variation of the squat one to three times per week using a variety of exercises to develop this movement pattern and build muscle throughout your entire body.
(16:19)
And now number seven, the last movement pattern that you should be practicing in your workouts every week is rotation. By this I mean specifically rotation of the torso or thoracic spine. For this, you should practice actually rotating through the thoracic spine with exercises like Russian twists, wood chops, and bicycle crunches, which you also should practice anti rotational movement where you resist rotating while your body is performing some kind of an uneven exercise. Good examples of this would be holding a plank position while doing shoulder taps or lifting your legs or stepping them outside to side. All of this will help you to develop better posture and core control, which is super important for helping you to reduce your risk of injury while performing other exercises. It's also a really great way to develop mobility in your back. I know most of my clients struggle with tightness in their backs and performing rotational exercises greatly reduces the discomfort and the back pain that they feel in their everyday lives in addition to making their core stronger and allowing them to lift heavier.
(17:25)
Now, the main muscles that are involved in thoracic rotation are your obliques muscles in the size of your torso, but other muscles also have to engage here to stabilize you and to assist with the exercise like your latus and doci muscles as well as your abdominals. Practicing rotational exercises is also really important if you are an athlete because most athletic movement involves some form of rotation. So when you practice this movement pattern slowly with resistance, you can ensure that your body will move better while you're doing your athletic performance. This type of movement is important to practice a lot more frequently than the others, and I recommend including at least one exercise that involves thoracic rotation in every workout. You can do this as part of your warmup or actually do it as part of an accessory during the muscle building portion of your workouts. So there you have it. Seven exercises that you should be using in your workout program every single week to help you to develop a better overall physique, improve your athletic performance and improve your strength.
(18:34)
And that's the episode for today. Thank you so much for joining me. Let me know what your thoughts are about these seven exercises, and also let me know if you're using them in your workout routines. Are there any exercise patterns that you are not including that you are thinking about adding more of? Let me know all of that in the comment section. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're listening to this podcast, thank you so much for listening. Make sure that you have followed the channel, that you always get the latest episodes. If you're on YouTube, make sure to like this video if you found it helpful and subscribe to the channels that you always get the latest videos. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. Remember that you can find my workout programs including exercise tutorial videos that I have made with some other additional coaching and guidance at my website, jd gains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N-S.com. And also keep in mind that you can join me live and ask your fitness questions on my Twitch channel on Tuesdays. That's Twitch tv slash Jaydigains. You can hang out with me while I do my workout, ask your fitness questions, and just share your progress and hang out. I hope you have a great rest of your day. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 49: Planning for Fat Loss with Kris Lee @Terrible_Hime
In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I sit down with my friend and fellow content creator, Kris Lee (aka Terrible Hime), to talk about the ins and outs of planning for a successful fat loss phase. Kris shares her personal experiences, discussing the mental and physical preparation needed, how to set realistic goals, and how to manage calorie intake effectively.
We also cover the importance of self-awareness, setting boundaries, and creating a supportive environment. Fat loss isn’t just about numbers—it’s about mindset, habits, and sustainability. If you’re in a fat loss phase or considering one, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you stay on track.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ How to mentally and physically prepare for a fat loss phase
✅ The impact of social interactions on fat loss progress
✅ Managing the mental fatigue of calorie deficits
✅ Why boundaries and self-care are essential for long-term success
✅ The role of hobbies and stress management in achieving fitness goals
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast.
In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I sit down with my friend and fellow content creator, Kris Lee (aka Terrible Hime), to talk about the ins and outs of planning for a successful fat loss phase. Kris shares her personal experiences, discussing the mental and physical preparation needed, how to set realistic goals, and how to manage calorie intake effectively.
We also cover the importance of self-awareness, setting boundaries, and creating a supportive environment. Fat loss isn’t just about numbers—it’s about mindset, habits, and sustainability. If you’re in a fat loss phase or considering one, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you stay on track.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ How to mentally and physically prepare for a fat loss phase
✅ The impact of social interactions on fat loss progress
✅ Managing the mental fatigue of calorie deficits
✅ Why boundaries and self-care are essential for long-term success
✅ The role of hobbies and stress management in achieving fitness goals
🔗 Resources & Links:
🎯 Tune in next week for more expert tips to help you crush your fitness goals!
-
Kris (00:00):
If you're like me and you weigh yourself every day, you feel really good when you see a low weigh in, but you see a high weigh in and you feel stressed about it or you feel bad. You're like, why did I just gain two pounds overnight when it's probably like water retention or food in your stomach or something like that. But yeah, the mental fatigue a lot of times is just as bad, if not worse than the actual physical fatigue of working out and being tired.
Jayd (00:38):
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. In today's episode, I'm really excited to share with you a conversation that I had with my very good friend and fellow content creator, Terrible Hime or Krista Lee. Now, Kris has been on a fat loss journey over the last couple of months and she's been documenting her progress through her fat loss journey on her YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe to her channel, which is linked in the description of this video below. If you're watching on YouTube, you can also find a link to her channel if you're listening to this podcast in the show notes. In a couple of the previous episodes, we've talked about what to expect if your body is comping. We've also talked about what to expect and what to plan for when you want to go into a bulk phase or an improvement phase.
(01:28)
I wanted to talk to Kris about her fat loss journey and have her share some of the tips and tricks that she's learned over the last couple of years as someone who has gone on different phases of dieting and muscle building and maintenance, I really have loved her updates on her YouTube channel and she has just so many great tips to offer for people who are looking to cut weight and go into a calorie deficit. So this is a little bit of a longer episode, but it is so well worth it. Kris offers so much insight and so many very helpful strategies for navigating going into a cut phase. So if you are thinking about going into a calorie deficit, I really recommend giving this episode a listen and taking some notes. And before we get into the episode, make sure to this video and leave a comment in the comment section of what you want to know in regards to what to expect when you are planning a cut, a bulk or a maintenance phase. If you're listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Please make sure to follow the show so that you get notified whenever there's a new episode. Without further ado, let's get into the discussion with Kris. A Terrible Hime, how are you doing today?
Kris (02:49):
I'm good. As good as can be expected, I guess.
Jayd (02:52):
Right. How many weeks are you now into your cut?
Kris (02:55):
This is coming to the end of week 10. Week 10 out of 16.
Jayd (03:02):
Okay. Where's your motivation and mood at right now?
Kris (03:12):
It's okay. Right around week eight, the halfway point, I was not really feeling so great. I was getting pretty fatigued mentally and physically, but I took a weekend to deload and I did a very conservative refeed day. Just one very conservative refeed day and actually I'm feeling a lot better after that.
Jayd (03:38):
Good.
Kris (03:38):
And obviously the end is approaching, so I'm feeling good about that as well and I have a big vacation planned after that.
Jayd (03:47):
Yes, yes. Well, for everybody who is joining in has not met this lovely, lovely lady before. This is terrible. I'm Jaydigains, Jayd Harrison, terrible Heime and I met as streamers on Twitch in the fitness and health category and we've been friends for the last couple of years and both of us moved over onto YouTube. She moved over a lot earlier than I did and she has been documenting her fat loss journey over the last 10 weeks And
(04:23)
It's been really cool. I love your vlogs and I will be linking those below in the description of this video, so make sure that you subscribe to Terrible Hime's channel. She is doing vlogs for her fat loss journey, but she also has a lot of other really cool vlogs. I love your planners and your journal content As a planner journal, girly myself, it's always fun to see how other people are doing their planners and their journals. And I wanted to have you on today because I have been kind of covering the bases with my audience on the different phases of fitness and diet that people can go through depending on what their focus is. We have covered comping or being in a maintenance phase. We've also had a discussion on things to think about before going into a bulk and what to expect before going into a bulk.
(05:27)
And I wanted to talk to you specifically about things too that people should think about going into a cut phase or a diet phase focusing on fat loss because it is something that you don't want to enter into too lightly. You want to have a plan about it and also have your mindset in the right place. And like I said, plan through it and I figured who would be best to talk to about planning a cut phase than you because you are so organized yours and you manage your cut phases well and you have so much success with them. So could you just introduce yourself a little bit to my audience?
Kris (06:07):
Yeah. Hi, I'm Kris, a Terrible Hime on the internet. I also make videos here on YouTube about, as Jayd said, fitness planners and the occasional vlog. I have been on a fitness journey or living a fitness lifestyle for over 10 years. I was at one point a certified personal trainer, but unlike Jayd, I've never actually worked with clients. I did it more for personal education I would say. And yeah, I am mostly a lifting girly. I primarily do weight training and I've gone through several bulking and cutting cycles and honestly right now I feel like the current fat loss phase that I am on has been the easiest and the most successful fat loss phase I've ever done.
Jayd (07:01):
That's amazing. I think that I've seen you go through fat loss phases. I think maybe you've done one every year. Is it once a year?
Kris (07:11):
About once a year. The last time I got very lean was like two years ago, I think in 2023, but then I had a hernia and I had to get surgery and I kind of fell off a little bit after that. Not on fitness in general, but just kind of being on the very lean side. I did a small fat loss phase in 2024, but I didn't get super lean I would say.
Jayd (07:45):
I mean, you've been a gym girly for almost, it's got to be 10 years now, right?
Kris (07:51):
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly. 10 plus something like that. Somewhere in that time. I'm really bad with dates. Me too. So honestly, I couldn't tell you exactly when I started. But
Jayd (08:01):
Yeah, it has been a while and I think that for people who have been on a fitness journey for as long as we have in that intermediate to advanced level of fitness, we do have to be more concentrated and focused in order to make a difference on our bodies. We are way past newbie gains, which for most people when they first start on their fitness journey, they they can experience a drastic change in their bodies. They can burn a lot of fat and build a lot of muscle pretty quickly within the first six months to year or even two years sometimes, depending on the person.
Kris (08:51):
In the first three years of lifting weights, I probably put on about 30 pounds of muscle. It estimated about 30 pounds. And then since then it's definitely slowed down significantly, but still slowly gaining over time.
Jayd (09:09):
And I mean that's just normal and I think a lot of people who hit that three year mark or that six month mark whenever it is that they're going to hit the end of their newbie gains, which is different for every person. They can sometimes be like, oh no, I am doing something wrong. My gains are not happening as fast as they were before. I'm not burning fat as fast and I'm not building muscle as fast. And that's right on track. That's right on schedule. When you kind of cross over from the newbie gains, you do need to focus what you're doing with your training and what you're doing with your diet to make significant gains. If you want to speed up the gains that you're making, whether it's fat or fat loss or building muscle, you kind of have to alternate between blocks or phases of training and diet where you're either focusing on specifically burning fat or building muscle. And I think for both of us, we spend the majority of each year in more of a muscle building phase or a maintenance phase at the least, right?
Kris (10:15):
Yes, for sure. At some point when you're in a fat loss phase, what do you say? Diminishing returns. It's diminishing returns. You have to keep slowly dropping your calories. Over time you're more and more fatigued and at some point it's so awful, it's not really worth the extra half a pound or one pound of fat loss. So for me personally, 16 weeks is about the maximum I will do for a fat loss phase, and then I'll either go back into maintenance for a little while, let my body recover, let my fatigue levels drop off, and then if I wasn't quite where I wanted to be with that fat loss phase, I might go into another fat loss after a few months or I might go into an improvement phase or a muscle building phase.
Jayd (11:10):
I really love that you call it an improvement phase because a lot of people, particularly women, are really sketched out by calling fat phase a bulk, which is what most gym goers will call it, is a bulk when you're trying to build muscle, when you're focusing on building muscle. And I think it's because it evokes this idea of like, oh, I'm going to get bulky, which I think as lifting weights has become more popular for women, that does seem to be less of a fear, but it's still something that I hear from clients, a lot of women who are like, I want to build muscle, but I don't want to become bulky. And they kind of have this sort of misunderstanding that they're going to look like a competitive bodybuilder man if they build muscle.
Kris (12:04):
Yes.
Jayd (12:04):
Do you have anything to speak to that in particular?
Kris (12:08):
I mean, it's kind of like for me personally, the proof is in the pudding. If somebody says that to me, I ask them, well, what do you think about my body type? I've been training weights for 10 plus years. Do you think that I look bulky? Do you think that I look like a man or a male body that's a competitive bodybuilder? And I think in most cases the answer is no. I probably look more fit and more muscular than the average woman, but not in a way that is super masculine. I still have a smaller waist, I have wider hips. I have kind of that hourglass shape, and actually I've built that through weightlifting because prior to lifting weights, I had more of a straight up and down figure.
Jayd (13:03):
Yeah, I do have to say your booty has come such a long way since I've known you because a couple of years ago you really didn't like to do leg work and you and your husband Joey, working out on stream, you would mostly prioritize hitting upper body. And I think maybe it was three years ago you started to really focus on doing leg work. And I can tell a huge difference. Respectfully. I'm looking respectfully, but your booty, your legs, they look so good. And I know what actually, to me it looks like, I think that for a woman who wants to get into weightlifting or has in the back of their mind this fear of getting bulky, I think the best case scenario really for you is that she'll look like an action, an action character,
Kris (14:03):
Like a superhero
Jayd (14:04):
Like
Kris (14:05):
Wonder Woman.
Jayd (14:06):
Yeah. You'll end up more, the more likely thing that's going to happen is you're going to look like a video game character or an action movie star like Angelina Jolie, tomb Raider. So that's the more likely scenario because as women, it's just really hard. Well, it's hard actually for anybody, men and women, it is hard to build muscle.
Kris (14:31):
Yes, it's hard.
Jayd (14:32):
Yeah. Competitive bodybuilders, most of them are on gear. Most of them are on steroids to get as big as they are, and they also have to eat a stupid amount of food to get as big as they are.
Kris (14:45):
Yes.
Jayd (14:46):
For most gym goers like you and me, most gym girlies, like you and me, we do spend the majority of the year in an improvement phase trying to build muscle or a bulk phase in the traditional term, and even in a bulk, even in an improvement phase, we don't look like men. In fact, I think I look way curvier during bulk phases.
Kris (15:11):
I think I do as well.
Jayd (15:13):
I love being in a bulk. I get so many compliments on my butt when I'm in a bulk because I also respond really, really quickly to being in a bulk. I start building muscle really, really quickly, especially in my legs. So my legs start to look really like my thighs start to look really nice and big and firm, and then my butt just starts to get really firm as well. And then when I cut it, it can be a little demoralizing in a different way.
Kris (15:47):
You can't choose where you start losing the weight. And most of the time for most people, you start losing in your limbs, which includes your legs, and a lot of times we retain the fat around our midsection, which is where everybody wants to lose it first. So yeah, you start to see yourself changing, but you don't always love the very specific results that you get, unfortunately.
Jayd (16:16):
Exactly. And when I do go into a bulk, one of the first things that I lose is that definition in my belly, and that can be really a little bit jarring for my personal body dysmorphia, which I think a lot of us have to some degree, and it's something you just kind of have to go with. But I probably won't be going into a cut phase myself anytime soon because I'm really, really enjoying the gains. I'm really enjoying how quickly my muscles are growing now that I'm actually feeding them properly.
Kris (16:53):
The strength too
Jayd (16:54):
And the strength, I really love my strength gains. It's so fun to be able to put more weight on the bar and it not feel uncomfortable or scary, you know what I mean? So I probably won't be heading into a cut anytime soon. It probably won't be until next year, and that's normal. I think when you get to that intermediate phase of training, not only is it like you're going to spend most of the year probably in an improvement phase where you're focusing on building muscle, you may not even cut. You might go through a whole year where you don't even cut at all and you might just bulk or build muscle throughout that whole year. But I think a lot of gym goers do tend to bulk cut and recomp pretty cyclically according to the season.
Kris (17:45):
A lot of people want to get more lean summer for vacations for going to the beach and stuff like that. Personally, it just so happens that my cut kind of coincides with getting leaner for the summer, but in the whole of my fitness career, more often than not, I've been leaner in the wintertime. It really depends on how my fitness journey is going. Mean I like to be in an improvement phase for much, much longer than I'm in a fat loss phase because building muscle takes time and I don't really want to put on a large percentage of fat. Obviously when you're gaining weight, usually it's a little bit of both, but if you gain a bunch of weight really quickly, it's more likely it's fat content rather than muscle. So I prefer eight months to a year or more in an improvement phase.
Jayd (18:46):
Well, let's talk about, if you're thinking about going into a cut, I think one of the first things that you should think about is when and for how long are you going to be cutting? What's your goal? So when you yourself reach a point where you want to start to cut, what are the things that kind of trigger that for you? What are the things that make you think, okay, I'm going to start planning out a cut phase for myself?
Kris (19:13):
So I usually take into account my body fat percentage, and it's usually not an exact measurement, just kind of a visual estimate of what my body fat percentage is. When I personally get to around 25%, that's when I start thinking about going into a fat loss phase. The other really big factor for me is my hunger levels. A lot of times because I do these fat loss and then weight gaining phases when I'm eating a lot to gain weight, I don't want to really say that I'm a hard gainer. I don't necessarily think that's what I am, but sometimes it does get to the point where I just don't feel like I want to eat to keep growing. I feel full a lot. I feel like I'm forcing myself to eat. I'm feeling sluggish and also just how my body feels. If I am getting to the point where I'm finding it harder to move or I'm finding that a lot of my clothes are not fitting in a way that I find flattering or comfortable, that also starts to tell me, Hey, maybe it's time to start dialing it back and go into a fat loss phase.
(20:38)
So yeah, I guess that's three main things. My body fat percentage, my appetite, and how comfortable I feel in my own body.
Jayd (20:47):
I think that's a really good point. Number two that I don't often think about because just like when we are in a fat loss phase, as you decrease your body mass and your maintenance level of calories decreases, then you in order to continue to burn fat, you have to adjust your calorie intake. The same is true if you're deliberately trying to build muscle, because as you build muscle, your body needs more calories. And so if you've been in an improvement phase for a really long time, your body will adjust to the number of calories you're eating, and so you can very easily plateau in the amount of muscle that you're gaining in order to get over that plateau and get your body building muscle again. You have to eat more, you have to eat more calories, you have to eat more protein.
(21:38)
And yeah, that's definitely an issue that I think a lot of people in my audience probably never really have run into before or yet because a lot of people are mainly focused on fat loss, but the other side of the coin is true as well. You can reach a point when you're wearing your fitness journey where you're trying to build muscle and you can't eat enough and you feel like you're force feeding yourself, that is another really good sign that's maybe time to dial it in and consider either going into a maintenance phase or cutting.
Kris (22:15):
And definitely I'm not the kind of person that eats a very small amount. I love food. I love high calorie food, I love fatty foods, I love fast food, and I can really tell when I'm getting to that point of, okay, I really don't need to go out today. I really just need to eat a vegetable. You can feel it. You get to that point where you're just like, my body needs something more nutritious.
Jayd (22:46):
And you track your calories and your macros all year round, right?
Kris (22:52):
No.
Jayd (22:52):
No. Okay, gotcha. So
Kris (22:55):
I'm very specific about it.
Jayd (22:58):
Okay.
Kris (22:59):
I would say that generally speaking, I have a good relationship with food and mental health wise food, and we kind of vibe
Jayd (23:07):
That's Good.
Kris (23:08):
But I find that when I am tracking my macros and my calories all year round, especially when I'm in an improvement phase trying to eat more, I get into kind of a weird head space where I have a hard time eating foods that I don't feel like are worth it. So I'll on purpose stay away from higher calorie, less satiating foods, even though I can fit them into my macros. So things like candy, chips, snacks, even protein bars, sometimes I won't eat them because I feel like it's not worth it. So usually when I'm in an improvement phase, I'm still really focused on eating a lot of protein, but I don't necessarily track my food all the time just to give myself a mental break.
Jayd (24:05):
That's interesting because it just kind of shows that you don't have to be tracking all the time in order to be successful. So you just keep an eye on protein basically.
Kris (24:16):
I mean, I don't even really track anything.
Jayd (24:19):
Oh,
Kris (24:20):
When I get into a serious improvement phase, so I'll track when I am in a fat loss phase, I'll track when I'm at maintenance and I might track for a month or two into an improvement phase, but I've kind of been doing it for so long, I can tell when I'm getting enough protein. I also might incorporate some specific strategies. I always drink protein coffee in the morning, and that's just like an easy 20 grams of protein. And I might be like, okay, I definitely want to have an extra protein shake every single day, and that's another 25, 30 grams of protein. So that's already third of what I need throughout the day, and I'm definitely going to have some sort of protein with dinner, and I'm definitely going to have some sort of protein with lunch, and I just try to make sure you have your healthy plate model. I Just try to make sure that I have that kind of larger portion of protein on my plate whenever I eat something.
Jayd (25:21):
Hell yeah.
Kris (25:22):
I never have just a plate of plain noodles or instant ramen without adding eggs and meat or tofu into it.
Jayd (25:33):
Yeah, I just
Kris (25:33):
Always trying to prioritize.
Jayd (25:35):
I love that you allow for yourself to eat more intuitively when you're in an improvement phase because that is something that going into a cut phase. I think another thing that people need to think about and be conscious of is that if you are going into a fat loss phase, then you do have to be more careful and mindful about what you're eating because you can't really get away with as much as when you are in an improvement phase, an improvement phase, your body is going to use whatever energy you put into it. It may store some of it as fat, but especially if you're hitting the gym as hard as you should, then most of that is going to be going to your muscles. But when it comes to fat loss, you are going to have a hard time actually burning fat unless you're keeping an eye on your caloric intake.
Kris (26:23):
Yes.
Jayd (26:24):
So I love that you give that mental break for yourself so that you don't have to track all year round because that can be pretty fatiguing for people.
Kris (26:32):
Yes. Yeah, definitely.
Jayd (26:34):
And what do you use to track your food when you are in a maintenance or a fat loss phase?
Kris (26:41):
So I have used MyFitnessPal in the past. Currently I'm using Macro Factor. I think there are a lot of really good apps out there, and honestly, I mean you could just use a spreadsheet and a calculator if you just want the cheapest option possible. I think macro factor is good with some caveats that it is a paid app and most people can get away with using a free app or an app that has a free option. Like MyFitnessPal. I used MyFitnessPal for many, many, many years without paying for anything and without using the barcode scanner, just searching for stuff and using stuff that I had used many times in the past, and I had absolutely no issues with it. I was just looking to try something new. So I've decided to use macro factor for now.
Jayd (27:38):
When you are going into a fat loss phase. So we talked about what makes you decide to go into one, but when you actually sit down to plan it, what are the things that you think about when you're planning your fat loss phase? How long will it be and how many calories you're going to eat or what your macros will look like? Could you share a little bit about that part of the planning
Kris (28:03):
Process? Yeah, for sure. So for me, 16 weeks is the max, and I will usually have in my mind a certain body fat percentage look that I'm aiming for or I might have a specific weight goal. I tell myself, if I get that ahead of 16 weeks, maybe I'll stop early. So anywhere from 12 to 16 weeks is usually what I allow myself. Also, because I don't want to force myself to be so restricted to lose really, really quickly. I want to give myself time to kind of ease into a little bit and kind of lose at a steady, slower sort of pace. And then when it comes to planning, well, I will say that I have a very easy lifestyle for fat loss. So I don't have children. My husband is also into fitness and we typically will be in bulking and cutting cycles at the same time, he also takes care of most of his food throughout the day.
(29:21)
We only have dinner together, and it's easy for me to plan out how I'm going to schedule how I eat. So I have in my mind what I'm going to do throughout the day. So I'll have my protein coffee, I'll have a protein shake, I'll have a small lunch and I'll have a bigger dinner. And when it comes to deciding how my macros are formed, I guess I always prefer to get one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So as somebody who's already on kind of the leaner side, even when I have reached peak bulk, I'm still probably on the leaner side for women. One gram per pound of body weight usually works for me either way,
Jayd (30:13):
Right
Kris (30:14):
Around one 50, A little bit more, a little bit less day to day is totally okay with me for hormonal health, especially as a woman, I try not to let my fat intake get too low. I usually go for around 40 to 50 grams of fat a day, and then I just let the rest of the calories get eaten up by carbs. And when it comes to setting a specific calorie intake goal, I will start on the conservative side and then adjust over time based on how my weight is fluctuating. So I look at the trends. I do weigh myself every day and there's ups and downs to that, but I try to look at the trends over time, and if I see that it's not really going down, then I adjust.
Jayd (31:08):
Do you know your maintenance calories going into this or do you calculate them using your app or something?
Kris (31:15):
So the macro factor app, and I'm really not trying to plug this app too much because it has some downsizes.
Jayd (31:23):
No, I just want you to talk about what you use and what works for you. Because even if people are using MyFitnessPal, it's a very similar process. Most of these apps kind of give you some estimates.
Kris (31:34):
So at the beginning of my fat loss phase, which was right around the beginning of January, my estimated total daily energy expenditure was between 18 and 1900 calories a day, which seen, I would say I was surprised. I thought that was on the low side, but I'm also very sedentary unless I'm making myself move around more. I typically get around 5,000 Steps,
Kris (32:05):
Which is not a lot. Even with working out just lifting weights, it's very low. So even though I have kind of a higher muscle mass, total daily energy expenditure is pretty low. And then I would probably, I actually had macro factor tell me at the beginning of this fat loss phase what my calories and macros should be. But if I were to do it without that, I would probably cut about 300 calories off of that and adjust over time.
Jayd (32:35):
Got it.
Kris (32:36):
So if I was estimated around 1800, I'd probably drop down to 16 or 15 and see how that worked. For me,
Jayd (32:47):
That seems so low. That's so interesting. When I think about our lifestyle, because you are, you've always been way more leaner than me, I tend to run a little bit higher body fat percentage wise, and that's kind of where my body likes homeostasis wise. I stay a little bit higher. And then from time to time, really for maybe a month out of the year, I'll be super, super lean. And usually that's not on purpose. It's usually because of stress and I'm A DHD, just kind of forgetting meals and stuff, which is not good either. But also at the same time, I have a very, very, very active lifestyle. I'm on my feet moving around all day. I work full time as a personal trainer, and I have clients all day. Sometimes my sessions will be back to back for seven to 10 hours straight. So
Kris (33:40):
Yeah, that's on top of your own workouts.
Jayd (33:43):
Yeah, exactly. That
Kris (33:44):
Are pretty intense with the power lifting.
Jayd (33:47):
So for me, and I'm shorter than you, much shorter than you. It's just so interesting. The difference in, for me, eating 1500 calories, I would just be so miserable. 1500 calories for me would be mental health issues, and I would experience all of the things that happen when you're not eating enough calories, and that would be unhealthy for me. My usual maintenance level of calories tends to be somewhere around 2105, 3, 130 to 135 pounds. Although I've been trying to gain weight. I want to get to be 1 45, but I'm still 1 35. I just stay there.
Kris (34:30):
I mean, is it possible to recomp in the opposite direction
Jayd (34:35):
Where yeah, it
Kris (34:37):
Is, or is it still considered the same thing as you are not really gaining a lot of fat, but you're definitely getting stronger and probably building muscle at the same time? Yeah,
Jayd (34:48):
I actually, I think I have been recomp for a while because recently I've been much leaner and I've been building muscle and getting stronger. Yeah, definitely. Although I would say I'm like you. When I'm in an improvement phase, which I am, I consider myself to be in a bulk. I am very, very loosey goosey with my diet. I just try to eat enough protein. For me that's at least 95 grams of protein a day. And if I get that very minimum, then I'm happy. But I know that I could totally eat a lot more and probably make a lot more progress in my bulk, but I have to balance that out with busyness. But all that to say, one person's needs for calories and macros can be very wildly different from another person's, and you can't just compare what your body needs to what another person's body needs. It's
Kris (35:52):
100%
Jayd (35:53):
Right, because we all have different lifestyles, and in general, if you are more active, if you are on your feet a lot, you're going to need to eat more. So the amount that I have to eat in order to build muscle is just, it's not sustainable for most of the time. And so I do kind of just stay at a recomp. I just stay at maintenance most of the time. Even though I say I'm in a bulk, I'm really comping because it's not feasible with the amount of activity that I get. Probably if I was a little bit more sedentary that I probably would be able to build more muscle. And so I think it's important to make that distinction because people, we can sometimes get a little bit of different lifestyles, get a bad rap, and we can assign shame or bad to different things. And it's not necessarily bad. You can be healthy with different lifestyles. You can still be a gym girly if you have a sedentary job and it's not good or it's not bad. It's just what your body needs in terms of how many calories you need to eat.
Kris (37:05):
And also for you, I would say that eating more carbs probably helps with your energy levels being on your feet all day. Whereas for me, and just primarily lifting when I do move around, having really high protein actually helps a lot with muscle soreness. So yeah, I find that for me personally, having a really more protein that I need on a daily basis actually really, really helps with my recovery.
Jayd (37:37):
Hell yeah. I think that I get away with it. I mean, I do definitely have a lot of soreness at the beginning of a new block, but in general, once my body, once I get into the second week, I'm good, I'm good to go. And I think probably I get away with it because I do have a lot of sugar. I do eat more sugar
(37:59)
Because I have hot chocolate with my coffee twice a day, and I don't deny myself treats a couple of days, and if I feel like having donuts, I get some donuts and I'm not eating donuts all day, but I allow myself these things and because of the effect of protein sparing because I'm so active and I give my body enough sugars for the level of activity that I have, that's probably why I'm able to get away with having a lower protein intake, especially on those A DHD days where I hyper focus, then I don't eat enough.
Kris (38:36):
Probably also just the way that you move around so much and work with your clients, you're probably getting some mobility work out of that that kind of helps get the soreness out of your system. Whereas I'm sitting at my desk all day eight hours a day, just like,
Jayd (38:54):
Right, right. And that does make it harder. So that's another thing that someone should keep in mind if they're thinking about going into a cut phase. Let's talk about soreness because we've talked about how you plan going into a cut, and then also the limits that you put on your cut, you'll cut until you get a certain body fat percentage at the most 16 weeks. Let's talk about the things that people don't often think about going into a cut phase, what they need to know and what they need to expect because it's not going to be sunshine and roses and rainbows the whole time. There's very real negative downsides to being in a calorie deficit, especially if you are in a steep calorie deficit or if you've been in a cut for a really long time. So could we talk about the things that people need to have themselves prepared for going into a cut?
Kris (39:57):
Definitely the biggest thing that you need to prepare yourself for is not only the physical fatigue, but the mental fatigue of being in a calorie deficit. For me, even with all of my planning and all of my strategizing, the mental fatigue still builds up over time thinking about food all the time. What am I going to eat? What's going to fit into my calories? How am I going to get my protein? Thinking about my workouts, like, oh, am I going to get injured? Do I have to be careful? Am I doing all right? Do I have to get more steps? I added steps into my routine to help facilitate fat loss that I wasn't doing prior to this. So it's like, okay, how many steps do I need to get this week? Do I need to be on the treadmill for how long do I need to be on the treadmill?
(40:48)
These kinds of things just build up over time, and usually the longer you're in a fat loss phase, the worse it gets because you're also not eating a lot of food. Most people when they're not eating a lot, they're really grumpy. When they're low calories, they feel hungry, they feel tired because a lot of times when you're in a fat loss phase, you don't sleep as well. And I can't remember the specific reason why that happens, but there is a specific reason why that happens. One thing that I don't think gets talked about a lot that I find mentally fatiguing is that when I'm in a fat loss phase, I lose hair much more quickly.
(41:36)
So it's like when I take a shower, it's like a huge clump of hair in the drain. And as a woman, hair loss is not really something that you necessarily worry about. It's not as talked about among, I would say the female community, I guess. So sometimes that can be really draining. Sometimes if you're like me and you weigh yourself every day seeing you feel really good when you see a low weigh in, but you see a high weigh in and you feel like stressed about it or you feel bad, you're like, why did I just gain two pounds overnight when it's probably water retention or food in your stomach or something like that. But yeah, the mental fatigue a lot of times is just as bad, if not worse than the actual physical fatigue of working out and being tired.
Jayd (42:29):
I totally agree. That's something that I have seen with my clients. It is really the hardest thing to overcome. I find most of my clients the main struggle is mental, the mental health side of things. If you are prone to mental health issues, if you are prone to mental health issues, going into a calorie deficit can bring those out, can make those more exaggerated, especially when you are in a low calorie deficit. This is not to say that you can't cut and that you can't burn fat if you have mental health issues, but I generally am going to steer someone away from a really deep calorie deficit where they're eating way, way, way low calories if they are prone to mental health problems, and
(43:22)
Instead, I will have them do a longer but really shallow calorie deficit, and you can maintain a calorie deficit of just a hundred calories for a pretty long time, and a hundred calories is really easy to cut out. That's a matter of using a spritz can on your pan when you cook versus dumping olive oil into the pan. That's an easy,
Kris (43:50):
The way that most people use olive oil when they cook, that's probably more than a hundred calories, to be
Jayd (43:57):
Honest. When I'm in an improvement phase, which I am, I will just dump the olive oil on the vegetables, dump it into the pan. But if I'm trying to cut back a little bit and be more conservative in my calorie intake, then I switch that over into a spritz. That is a simple, easy way to get rid of a daily 100 to even 250 calories.
Kris (44:22):
If you switch your milk, if you typically drink whole milk, you switch it to 2%, 1% fat free. That's a ton of calories, even if you're the kind of person, for me, I don't just sit and drink a glass of milk, but I put it in my coffee and nowadays I'm using fat-free milk and I think it's, I don't know, 40 calories for as much as I dump into it. If that was whole milk, that'd probably be like three times as much.
Jayd (44:52):
Exactly. And so let's just make sure that we cover everything in terms of the mental things to expect or the downsides that you need to be prepared for, because if you're not prepared for the downsides, they can make you feel like a failure. That's the more common outcome is that if you're not expecting, oh, I'm going to be low energy, I'm probably going to be having some depressive low energy, or even just I'm going to be feeling sad and irritable. If you don't know that that's likely to happen, then it can make you feel all kinds
Kris (45:28):
Of gateway ways. I get really irritable.
Jayd (45:29):
Yeah, I do too. I just get really sad and doom and gloom when I am in a calorie deficit. If it's too low, if it's too low and it is more likely that these things become issues, the lower you go. What is the lowest that you personally will go in a fat loss phase? What's your cap on how quickly you burn fat?
Kris (45:54):
Right now, I am at 1450 calories a day, and I probably would not go lower than this. This is actually the lowest I've ever been in terms of calorie intake for a fat loss phase. And I think that maybe the goal that I set myself since I started out using macro factor to tell me what to set my calorie and macro intake at. I think my initial goal was a little too aggressive considering that I'm already on the leaner side, but I've kind of come into it and am doing really well on the 1450 calories. I am not feeling super hungry and I'm still able to eat a lot of foods that I like, but I wouldn't go lower than this personally. But I know that I am kind of on the bigger side and there are lots of people that would need to get a little bit lower in order to be in a fat loss state.
Jayd (47:08):
Personally, if nothing changes about my lifestyle with where I am now, I couldn't go lower than 1500. 1500 is really bare minimum for me. And I have lived at 1500 by accident for stretches of time, and I mean you've kind of seen how that was for me. I am more likely to burn out. I do have autism and A DHD and the lower that I go in my calories or the longer that I am in a calorie deficit, I am more often going to hit burnout. And burnout is that mental fatigue that sets in. It can often feel like a depressive episode where I just don't
(47:55)
Have the energy or motivation to do anything. I do a lot of bed rotting and I just need a lot of time to recharge after my very active, very social job, which makes it very hard for me to put in the work on my content, which is my other job. So that's a limitation for me in going into calorie deficits because I know if I have some big projects or a product launch or I'm trying to take on new clients or I'm designing a new program, that is not a good time for me to go into a calorie deficit or a cut phase. So you kind of have to think about that as well when you're planning on one.
Kris (48:43):
Yeah, you have to really think about your entire lifestyle. For me, I am very busy around the holidays because of work, And Then on top of family obligations with that, whatever people want to eat, they want you to eat. So personally speaking, I would never try to cut in October, November, December, it would be dooming myself to failure. It's just not a good idea. And I also usually go on vacation in May, so I wouldn't want to try to schedule a fat loss phase for that time either. Maybe when I got back, and I have done that before where I come back from vacation and I go right into a fat loss phase. But you have to think about the cycles in your everyday life and what makes the most sense for a fat loss phase. If you know your job is super duper busy at the beginning of the year, first quarter, you probably want to avoid going into a fat loss phase during that time. It just doesn't make sense to put yourself through that if you can do it some other time.
Jayd (49:55):
Oh, that's such a good point because a lot of people enter into the new year and they think, oh, it's the new year, so I should start my fat loss journey. But if they are in a business or in a field of that's very, very busy during Q1,
(50:12)
That is a terrible time to cut. I have a client who's a CPA and we've really struggled since he came to work with me. He came to work with me right out of grad school, so he's still kind of figuring out the waters in terms of his new life routine. But when it gets, there's multiple busy seasons throughout the year for CPAs. There are different deadline periods. He does work with businesses. So we've just figured out the best solution for him was initially let's settle into a generally healthy baseline lifestyle where you're generally following a baseline of following a healthy plate model and eating enough protein and then getting in two to three workouts a week and then just try to stay active when you can. And then once he passes a deadline, then we can do a mini cut, like a short and sweet period where we just cut back while he has the mental space and capacity, and then
Kris (51:20):
That totally makes sense.
Jayd (51:21):
And then that's a very short period because with CPAs, they have, I mean, there's a lot of different deadlines throughout the year, and so he's had to kind of think about when his cutting phases will happen according to that. And I think that's also important for most people to consider. I think around the holidays is a really bad time for most people to cut, but also don't be tempted by the New Year's resolutions if it doesn't really align with your lifestyle. Figure out when is the least stressful time of your year where you'll be able to actually put the effort into it, but at the same time, you have to ask yourself if that's worth it to you, because being in a calorie deficit is going to introduce stress into a time period for you that is normally not stressful, and your overall system may actually need that time to be more loosey goosey. You have to think about that as well,
(52:24)
Because you could very easily, for me, I have to be very careful about going into a burnout because with autism, burnout's a pretty serious threat. I think anybody with any brain type can burnout. You don't have to be on the spectrum. But for people who are on the spectrum, autistic burnout can lead to regression, regression in skills. It can literally cause brain damage. So there's a reason why many people, even people who are high masking or who are high passing in neurotypical society, a lot of them, once they reach burnout, there's some people who never recover from it and end up having to go on disability or it starts to manifest in physical illnesses. So you have to think about that as well. And that's not all to say that you can't burn fat, but doing a 500 to 1000 calorie deficit may not really be the best choice for you. So if you do want to focus on burning fat and you're going into a phase of your life where you feel like, I can focus on this right now, I think it's probably better to stick to longer periods with a very short amount of calorie deficit, 100 to 250 calories below maintenance versus trying to do an more extreme fat loss phase, which is 500 to a thousand calories below maintenance.
Kris (54:00):
And I think sometimes instead of going into a steep calorie deficit, you can go into a more moderate or low calorie deficit and add in more activity. A lot of people find that more sustainable going on walks or bike or something pretty low intensity that doesn't necessarily sap your energy a ton, but it's definitely burning an amount of calories.
Jayd (54:30):
Yeah, really
Kris (54:31):
Good point. Overall, you might be in more of a calorie deficit than you think. It's just not all through food.
Jayd (54:37):
Right? I think that's a really good point to make and also reminds me of my CPA client because he started making a lot of gains with his fat loss journey once he started playing disc golf with his friends. He does that a couple times A week, Disc golf, and I have a lot of clients who play pickleball as well, which has the added benefit of socializing time. So it's not just exercise, but it's something that they're doing in meeting with other people, maybe doing a little bit of business networking as well, or bonding, like social bonding. So that has a net positive in a number of different ways. One, it helps to kind of get calorie, the calorie burn high, but also you're scratching that social itch and getting to your social needs as well. I love that as a strategy.
Kris (55:25):
When I'm in a calorie deficit, I really try to not watch something that I know will be detrimental to my mental health. So I try to avoid sad movies and sad series. I try to find comedies or something fun to watch just to help boost my mood. I know that if something triggers me into a mood, like a sad mood or a depressive mood, I am going to be stuck there longer. I just won't have the mental energy to kind of hype myself out of it. So yeah, I try it specifically to look for things that I know are going to bring me joy.
Jayd (56:13):
Oh my God, that's such a good point. And I think that's another thing that people need to think about and plan for when they're going into a cut is how are you managing, how are managing your life to not add extra stress to it? And I think we can get into trouble, especially in the current climate currently, if you have a habit of doom scrolling on social media,
Kris (56:40):
Oh my gosh,
Jayd (56:41):
You are going to have a really hard time mental health wise while you're also in a calorie deficit. At the same time, you are also more likely to sabotage your fat loss by doing that because into, if you get stuck into that depressive spiral, that's when you're more likely to cheat on your diet and just to lose motivation with it. So you have to, in therapy, we talk about trauma triggers, right? So you definitely want to avoid triggers for yourself that could trigger a depressive episode when you're especially vulnerable like you are when you're in a cut. But there's also a term called glimmers, which are the opposite of triggers. Glimmers are things that spark joy. They're things that give you a shot of serotonin or oxytocin, which are your feel-good hormones. And so when you are in your cut phase, you want to make sure that you're filling your life, you're conscious of filling your life with the things that give you serotonin, your glimmers. What are some of your glimmers? What are your things that give you that little boost and shot of joy to keep you going? Well,
Kris (57:59):
Specifically in the past 10 weeks, I've watched more comedy series, like TV shows. So I watched what we do in the Shadows, which is very funny, very silly. I also watched only murders in the building, which is kind of a little serious, but it was also a lot of funny moments.
(58:25)
I specifically for social media, I specifically do not engage with stuff that I know is going to be mentally difficult for me. And when I'm not in a fat loss phase, I watch a lot of food content because I love food. So I watch a lot of YouTube videos centered around food or traveling and food. But I have to stop myself from watching that kind of stuff when I'm in a fat loss phase because not only does it, it just makes me feel bad all around. I can't eat it. It makes me hungry. So I try to focus on my other hobbies. So plant stuff, planners and journals, art, stuff like that. Something that like a hobby to keep me interested but isn't going to set me back or make it difficult for me to stick with my fat loss.
Jayd (59:21):
Yeah, I think leaning on hobbies and adding more hobbies is a really good
Kris (59:26):
Thing to specifically active hobbies, stuff that you do with your hands, not just, there's nothing wrong with just chilling out and watching tv, but sometimes when you don't have something to really focus on, you start boredom eating. I'm a big boredom eater. I'm big. Get up, go look at the pantry, see what's going on in there, and then maybe get something. And it's kind of hard to stop myself from doing that if I'm just sitting around not engaged actively with something.
Jayd (01:00:01):
For me, this is something that we share the plants. That's definitely a special interest for me. I love and adore my house plants and my vegetable garden. For me, it's also a low stimulus type of thing because my life is really busy and I'm in front of screens a lot. And so getting in front of just taking care of my plants is something outside in the real world, not in front of a screen. There's no lights and it's just low stimulus types of things. But also, I watch a lot of YouTube as well, but my self-care YouTube is mostly, or exploration videos of my favorite video games. I love to just think about Dark Souls and Elden Ring and Alan Wake and watch video essays on what's the deeper meaning behind this. And let's see, snuggling with my dog. I snuggle with my dog so much and play with my dog so much. So little glimmers like that help me to have the mental fortitude to get through not only the stress of being in a cut, but also, I mean, that's just kind of good self-care skills to have in general for whatever. These are things that we should be doing for ourselves no matter what.
(01:01:21)
Another thing that people should be wary of, which we mentioned were triggers. Being in a calorie deficit is a good opportunity for you to practice good self-care skills and therapeutic skills like journaling, because you do need to practice a lot of self-awareness and develop a lot of self-awareness to be in a cut successfully because you want to be aware of things like what situations tend to trigger you, not just mental health wise and depression wise, but also what are the things that tend to trigger you into mindless snacking or going off plan. What are the things that kind of trigger you into mindless snacking?
Kris (01:02:04):
I'm pretty okay when it comes to the mindless snacking, but I know that I have a really hard time holding back if I go to a restaurant.
(01:02:17)
So I am not saying that you should always avoid restaurants when you are in a calorie deficit, but I only go to restaurants when I know very specifically exactly what I will order, how it's going to fit into my plan. Otherwise, I will order everything on the menu and eat every last bite. I just go crazy when I go to restaurants sometimes it's a big problem. So yeah, for me, I have to avoid it when it comes to snacking. I'm the kind of person that can have just a very small amount of something and be okay with that. I can have one tiny piece of chocolate and I'll be good. I got the taste of it, so it's okay to have that kind of stuff in my pantry, but restaurants are just like, yeah, it's really hard when I'm at a restaurant.
Jayd (01:03:15):
Yeah, I noticed for a lot of my clients, if it is in the house, they can't have it in the house. If it's in the house, they'll eat it. And especially
Kris (01:03:23):
My husband is like that.
Jayd (01:03:25):
If it's in the house, they'll eat it and they won't have any self-control when it comes, they'll eat the whole bag. I think that I'm also that way. I am that way, especially if I'm super stressed. I could just house an entire box of Cheez-Its, or
Kris (01:03:44):
What I try to do is I try to get small things. So instead of getting a whole bag of chips, I'll get the little bags that are meant for kids'. Lunches
Jayd (01:03:56):
Doesn't stop me. I'm a cookie monster. I will be like, okay, well, I'm going to grab 1, 2, 3, I want some more.
Kris (01:04:02):
I can do just one or the mini bags of popcorn or just the two packs of Milano cookies from Costco. That's fine for me, but my husband in anything in the pantry try to eat it unless he just doesn't like it.
Jayd (01:04:20):
And those are things that we just have to learn about ourselves. And sometimes you don't know until it's like, Hmm, I'm really having trouble with this behavior.
(01:04:29)
And That's why I think journaling is such a powerful tool for life. But also when you're in a cut, it's important to journal, if not every day, at the end of every week, reflect on what you learned about yourself that week. Did you identify triggers that you weren't aware of before? And also it gives you an opportunity to brainstorm strategies to help you navigate those triggers.
Kris (01:04:59):
Sometimes
Jayd (01:04:59):
We can't avoid them for
Kris (01:05:00):
Sure.
Jayd (01:05:01):
Sometimes you can't avoid them. The biggest trigger for people I find is it's in the house, I'm going to eat it. But also social settings. Social settings is the biggest, but I don't like
Kris (01:05:13):
The house.
Jayd (01:05:14):
Right. That's the biggest hurdle for a lot of my clients, especially on the weekends. They'll get together with their friends, they'll be drinking, they will eat whatever. Shitty food, bar
Kris (01:05:30):
Food,
Jayd (01:05:30):
Bar food. Exactly.
Kris (01:05:32):
Yeah. Nothing healthy at a bar.
Jayd (01:05:34):
Exactly. That's not really a problem that you experienced because you guys aren't really in the bar scene type of thing, right?
Kris (01:05:42):
Yeah, I mean, I actually just don't like alcohol. I don't like the taste of it. I don't like the way that it makes me feel. So I have no problem avoiding it, but I'm also just not very social. I am truly privileged to have the type of lifestyle that makes it much easier for me to be in a fat loss phase than most people. But yeah, I have very few social obligations. I only leave the house once a week and that's like to go grocery shopping. I don't like bars, I don't like alcohol. Yeah.
Jayd (01:06:22):
Yeah, same. I am not really into that kind of scene as well
(01:06:28)
Because I am just too busy and I'm too tired by the end of the week usually if I have free time because my job is so social and because I'm streaming and whatnot, if I have free time, I really, I'm a grandma. I just kind of want to stay home and play with my plants or just read or watch TV or something because of just I'm talked out. But what I have found for a lot of my clients who do have social lives where they go out or they have parties or they have get togethers, a couple of things that have helped them. One is eating beforehand. If you go hungry to one of these gatherings, you are more likely to just go crazy and go off your diet and go off of your plan.
Kris (01:07:12):
Definitely.
Jayd (01:07:13):
Yes. So eating ahead of time, fall, eating ahead of time. What was according to your plan. Also, the thing, like you said, looking ahead of time, if you know where you're going to be going, if it's the restaurant or something, and ahead of time what is going to be on the menu, then you can go ahead and kind of plan for what you're going to eat and what you're going to drink while you're there. A lot of my clients plan for having two drinks max, which I think is kind of a good practice anyway just for health sake, but especially when you are on a calorie, when you're in a calorie deficit, that can be very helpful with setting a limit for yourself. And then also opting for lower calorie alcoholic beverages like a spritzer, like a vodka soda, something like that, versus a beer or a really sugary mixed Drink.
(01:08:04)
But also I have lot of other clients who they just don't do alcohol while they're in a cut, and that's fine because it's just empty calories anyway. It doesn't really do anything for you health wise. And also alcohol does tend to interfere with fat oxidation. So your body doesn't really burn fat while there's alcohol present in your system. So if you're focused on fat loss right now, drinking alcohol is really not going to help you. So you definitely want to think about reducing while you're in a cut phase or plan to reduce, or at least set a limit on what you're drinking. And in terms of the food plan ahead or eat ahead would be the best thing to do for social interactions. That one thing that one of my clients did, I'm super proud of him. He and his wife have a nerd night that they do once a week, and it's their very special time that they hang out with their friends.
(01:09:08)
They play board games or DD or they watch Lord of the Rings or something like that. And this is a creative outlet for this client because he really likes to cook. He likes to joke that his fantasy is being a 1950s housewife. He really loves to cook food for people. He loves to entertain. So for him, that's kind of how he shows love. And he had a little sit down with his group to explain to them, Hey, look, I'm really trying to eat healthier, and I know that I usually go all out and I make all of this really cheesy food, and he's polish too, so a lot of
Kris (01:09:51):
Cheese. I love cheese
Jayd (01:09:52):
Sausages and that kind of stuff. And he explained to them and said, I'm going to have to change the kind of stuff that I make for us during nerd night because I need to dial it back. And his friends were like, dude, that's fine. You're the one who makes the food. Nobody's holding a gun to your head. Make whatever you need and we're happy to eat whatever you cook. So it was like for him, a mental thing where he had to, he felt social pressure to create meals that were unhealthy or not unhealthy, but treat meals. Right, tasty.
Kris (01:10:23):
Yeah,
Jayd (01:10:23):
Tasty treat meals. And so when he talked to the people, he realized, oh, they didn't have any expectation of him to make these crazy, elaborate tasty foods. They were happy to just eat whatever he makes because it's a social situation. So sometimes you talk to your friends and be like, Hey, so here's what I'm trying to do with my lifestyle, and I'm not trying to push it onto you at all. It's just for me
(01:10:49)
Right now, I'm trying to make these changes. Is there something, would you be interested in being a part of it? And then you might be surprised that your friends will be like, oh, hell yeah, I need to cut back too. I need to get healthy too. So then maybe instead of meeting at this brewery or this bar, why don't we meet at somebody's house, maybe get catering from a Mediterranean restaurant or something, or maybe we make Mediterranean food something healthier and we hang out. We play d and d. And maybe not. Your people may be more supportive if you also bring them into the process, and actually they may actually be grateful to be part of it with you. So it's worth talking to your social circle about what your goals are and asking them without putting pressure on them, because
(01:11:46)
Everybody's Allowed to have their own journey, and nobody has the right to force fat loss on anybody else. But if you ask them if they want to be a part of what you're trying to do, if they want to support you and maybe keep you accountable, they might surprise you and be like, you know what? I kind of want to do that too. Let's do it together. And now it's a thing that you're doing together, which can be really beautiful. What other cautions or common pitfalls would you also want to want people to know about before they go into a cut that we haven't talked about already?
Kris (01:12:21):
For me, the thing that has been the most helpful and made this specific fat loss phase, the most successful one that I've ever done, is how much time and effort I put into planning before I even started. So this might not necessarily apply to a lot of your clients because they're working with you, but for other people that are watching or listening to this podcast that are kind of on their own, try to set yourself up for success ahead of time. So for me, what that looked like was having my entire workout program for the 16 week fat loss phase already completely planned out. So I made myself two eight week blocks of five workouts a week, and I literally set up my spreadsheet for 16 weeks so I don't have to think about what I'm doing for workouts at all. I just have to pick an appropriate weight the day of what I'm feeling is going to work for me. And that was awesome. That was so helpful. It's just one thing that's not causing me mental fatigue.
Jayd (01:13:44):
Hell yea
Kris (01:13:46):
When it comes to food, I don't meal prep or anything like that, but that might be something that you think about ahead of time. If food is something that stresses you out or something that is difficult for you, come up with a strategy, maybe have a set of recipes ready to go that you can choose from that are easy and quick for you to make or consider a meal prepping service to help you out, something like that. So just planning and strategizing ahead of time before you're already in a place where you're feeling really fatigued and stressed out. That was the thing that really, really, really helped me out this time around.
Jayd (01:14:35):
Yeah, I totally agree. I think that for me, the biggest thing that's helped me with my bulk, because it's the bulking part that I struggle with the most, is being on a rotating meal plan where I have the same recipes that I rotate through every six weeks and sticking to that. As long as I stick to that, I'm pretty successful and I'm able to eat as much as I need. But the same can be true of following a calorie deficit plan, having the same kind of rotation of things. And you don't have to eat the same thing every day, every week too. I personally,
Kris (01:15:06):
For sure,
Jayd (01:15:07):
Yeah, I prefer to have a rotating six week meal plan where week one is these three lunch and dinner recipes. Week two, we switch over to these three recipes and it is rotating every six weeks. And I eat the same thing for breakfast more or less, and I'll switch it out here and there as I get tired of eating Greek yogurt with blueberries or something like that. But yeah, making it so that you have to think about or plan in the moment as little as possible is so important because as you get tired, the mental fatigue of the cut sets in, you're going to have a lot less mental space for doing that, and that will make you more miserable.
Kris (01:16:03):
Yes, definitely.
Jayd (01:16:05):
I think one of the things that is important to do before you head into a cut as well is kind of prepare the people that are closest to you in your life, Because That is another really important influence on how you feel throughout your cut. And also those are the people who are more likely to sabotage, maybe not even meaning to. So it's worth having a conversation with the people that are closest to you, the people that you live with, maybe your Partner
(01:16:39)
Or other people in your life, especially if you tend to notice that you have certain triggers, like for you or for Joey when there's certain snacks in the house, he knows I don't have, I am not able to control myself with this thing. Please don't buy this at the grocery store.
Kris (01:17:00):
No, he actually, so he loves Oreos,
Jayd (01:17:04):
Right?
Kris (01:17:06):
He loves Oreos, and Oreos does this thing where a lot of times they have special limited edition variance. And he told me, if they have it at the store, buy it, but don't tell me if you buy it, but if you do, buy it, hide it and don't bring it out until May. And I was like, okay, I got you.
Jayd (01:17:31):
Yeah, that's beautiful. That's such a great way that you guys are working together, and it's so considerate and it's such a beautiful respect of boundaries. And I think that that's a testament to the strength of your relationship because that is, if you have a relationship where there's not clearly set boundaries and there's not the established expectation that the boundaries will be respected, then you are going to struggle a lot, especially if you live with that person. And that is going to be a major hurdle for you in your diet. So you have to plan for that. You may not be able to fix that part of the relationship. You may be living with someone that you know is just not going to change and their behavior, and they're not going to be respectful of those boundaries. So you have to know the person that you're with and whether or not a conversation like that or setting boundaries that might actually work, but with the assumption that you have a healthy, respectful relationship where you respect each other's boundaries, it's worthwhile to have that conversation with each other and say, look, this is what I'm trying to do for this period of time. It would really help me out if you could
(01:18:58)
Avoid having candy on the couch because if it's there or having candy on the coffee table, because if it's there, I'm going to eat it and I'm not going to be mindful of it. So Could You store your snacks somewhere else? That's a conversation that one of my clients had to have with his partner. But at the same time, if you know that your partner is not going to be cooperative, then you have to plan for that. And keep in mind that at the end of the day, you and you alone are responsible for your own gains. You are responsible for your own gains. You're going to have to take on a lot more responsibility for your gains to reach your goals, and don't expect any support from this other person and just plan for that
(01:19:49)
plan How You're going to navigate the obstacles of their behavior in order to do what you need to do. It's not acceptable to use your person or this other person as an excuse for you not doing the thing that you need to do. If you know that you're living with an uncooperative person, then you need to just plan for that and you can plan for it. And that's something that has kind of gotten on my nerves with some clients in the past where they kind of use their spouse, I imagine as an out of like, oh, well, she doesn't want to be doing this, and if she's eating ice cream, she wants me to be eating ice cream too. And it's like, well, you need to have a conversation about your relationship if you have the type of relationship where you're not able to say, no, that's not good for my body right now, but you do what you want to do. That's a problem with the relationship, and I think there's a larger conversation that needs to happen there.
Kris (01:20:45):
Definitely. My husband denies Joey, even though a lot of times we are in a similar phase in our fitness journey as a male body, he typically loses weight on much higher calories than me. He typically doesn't get below 1600 and 1600 is at the very, very end of a fat loss phase. So he has a lot more room to play with when it comes to his food intake. And a lot of times if he's snacking, that's on him and that's what he can do. But I'll have to remove myself from the situation. So we might be hanging out at night and he's having his cookies, and I'll just have to focus in on what we're watching completely have him out of my line of sight. And our house setup is very weird, but if I'm in the chill area and he's at the dining room table, we can both watch something, but I can't see what he's eating. I can't smell what he's eating, and it's still something we can watch together, but it's not tempting me. So if I have to remove myself from the dinner table, that's what I have to do.
Jayd (01:22:08):
And it all comes down to knowing yourself and knowing your triggers, practicing self-awareness, also, being able to set boundaries for yourself, respect those boundaries, and also be able to communicate those boundaries with the people in your life if they're the type of people who respect boundaries. And if not, then you have to strategize around that and plan for their, you have to plan for them not doing, you can't control other people and nor should you try, but if you sometimes have to remove yourself from a situation, then so be it. And I think that's important to go into this knowing. And I do also have to say, with that said, going into a calorie deficit, if you are in a new relationship and you do have a partner and you communicate this to them and you set boundaries around what you need from them, and that is a really great way to see what a person's made of and whether they are the type of people that will respect boundaries if they do begin behaviors where they sabotage what you're doing. I know people who have had partners that will playfully do the things that they ask them not to do and call it a joke, like, oh, I'm just joking around. And it's like, no, I've actually told you that this isn't funny to me. I've already asked you to stop and I've told you that this is something that I need from you, and you're making light of it. That's a good sign that this is a person who doesn't respect boundaries. And I would argue A Huge red flag, huge red flag, that tells you a lot because that's a behavior pattern that's going to continue and get worse over time. So I would take note of that. If you are with somebody who is sabotaging on purpose and you've had these conversations, you've set
Kris (01:24:11):
These
Jayd (01:24:12):
Boundaries, that is a sign,
Kris (01:24:14):
And not just around food, but also around your workouts. For me personally, the food is not really difficult. I enjoy cooking and I enjoy eating, and I am making 1,450 calories work for me without feeling like I'm missing out on a lot of stuff. But I really struggle to work out. I actually don't really like working out, and it can be hard to get myself into the gym to do the workouts that I know I need to do to keep my energy expenditure up. So not that he was trying to make me wait for him, but I've had to tell Joey, my husband, that I need to work out by this time of day, and if it gets any later than that, I lose all motivation to work out. If it's past six o'clock, I'm ready to lay down. I had to tell them, I know that we like to work out together, but if you have to work late, I need to get my workout in earlier in the day, otherwise it's not going to happen. So that's something that we had to have a little bit of a conversation about, and it was totally fine, and he understands, and if he wants to work out after he gets home, if it's later in the day, he'll get his workout in by himself.
Jayd (01:25:36):
I think that that's also really important that you had that conversation. I do have some clients that are a couple, and it was a pretty big deal once they realized she took on a job that was making her schedule different from her, and they had been doing all of their workouts together for the past five years, and they reached the point where they kind of had to do some without each other, and that was a really difficult transition emotionally for them. But again, at the end of the day, there comes a point where you do have to be mindful that you are, and you alone are responsible for your own gains and your own body.
Kris (01:26:22):
Exactly.
Jayd (01:26:23):
And it's okay for you to do some things together and some things apart because there's benefits to doing things on your own that actually can strengthen the bonds between you and your other person when you both have things that you do on your own and then you come back together and you bring those things to the relationship. Going into a cut is something that can put you in a vulnerable state, but it also can be a really great opportunity for you to grow as a person and also grow in your relationships, develop more.
Kris (01:26:57):
Communication is really important.
Jayd (01:26:59):
Exactly. More communication, refine your boundaries, practice respecting each other's boundaries, practice messing up and making the repairs to the relationship, all of that.
Kris (01:27:10):
And also know that you're probably going to be more irritable. So you also, both probably, if you and your partner are both in a fat loss phase, you need to be kind to each other. Maybe you need to take some time to yourself. Also, if something is getting a little bit heated, cool off and then come back and address it again later after you've had some time to think about the root of the problem or the root of the issue, whatever it is,
Jayd (01:27:40):
Yeah. And know that those things are going to likely happen more often. It's not an excuse for shitty behavior, it's not an excuse for treating each other badly, but your patience is going to be thinner, and you are going to more often have a harder time being your best self, which you should always be trying to be your best self. But just know that when those things come up, it's okay, like you said, to take a step back, cool down, and then come back and address things. And a lot of times it really comes down to I was just really hungry. I'm really sorry that I said that.
Kris (01:28:18):
A lot of times before I even will bring something up, I try to ask myself, is this bothering me because it's truly an issue that needs to be addressed, or is this bothering me because I'm hungry and irritable? And honestly, truly, nine times out of 10, I'm just being irritable. And if I sat down and was 100% real with myself, it was something that wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest if I wasn't
Jayd (01:28:50):
Hungry. Hell. And again, that's a really great thing that you've developed through many years of doing this, practicing self-awareness and also doing the work in your relationship and with yourself To Understand yourself and what's going on with you. So I think you're doing an amazing job.
Kris (01:29:13):
Thank you.
Jayd (01:29:14):
Congratulations on getting to week 10 of your 16 week cut. You're looking amazing. Your content is amazing. I love the quality of your vlogs. Everything you put out there is just so much, it's so relaxing to watch. We were talking about off stream or off recording, whatever. We Talk about how both of us really in this phase of our life are all about cozy, cozy fitness.
Kris (01:29:42):
And I said that it was funny because I don't really see myself that way, but you said it. And actually other people have said that to me as well. And I always kind of see myself as, I don't know, I don't know how I see myself, but not cozy and relaxing.
Jayd (01:29:58):
Yeah, no, you are though
Kris (01:30:00):
Kind of chaotic, I guess.
Jayd (01:30:02):
Well, there's relaxing chaos, I suppose.
Kris (01:30:07):
Yeah,
Jayd (01:30:08):
No, I love your channel. I've always loved your vibe. And when you were streaming on Twitch, I think one of the reasons why you were one of the more popular fitness streamers is because you do have, I
Kris (01:30:19):
Don't know about that.
Jayd (01:30:20):
You were, and I think the reason is because, well, it's just the vibes. Your vibes are very cozy, but also when someone comes to your stream or to whenever your YouTube videos, you are very straightforward. I don't feel like you're interacting with a person who is putting a false persona. You are always yourself. You're always 100% yourself. Maybe you just kind of dial up a little bit. The interactivity.
Kris (01:30:51):
I always tell people that when I am doing something for the public eye, I try to be myself, but I try to make it entertaining because if you saw me in real life, I'm just very quiet and not really moving around that much. But that's not very interesting for YouTube or Twitch or whatever,
Jayd (01:31:15):
Authentic.
Kris (01:31:15):
So I try to be myself. Yeah, I try to be authentic, but just engaging, I guess would be the word.
Jayd (01:31:22):
I like it. And I think one of the reasons why you are so successful in inspiring people to work out and to eat better and start a fitness journey is because,
Kris (01:31:35):
Which I also don't understand, because I'm just like, I tell people I hate working out, and I think it's just I'm being on a diet
Jayd (01:31:45):
Because you're walking the walk and you don't make a big deal out of it. I think there should be more people like that, which is just like, this is just part, I just have to take care of myself. I'm just here to take care of myself. I'm here to, I am just going to share what works for me, don't feel any pressure to do it my way. This is just kind of what helps me. And I think that that vibe really resonates with a lot of people, myself included, because there are enough people in the fitness industry, there are enough fitness influencers who are never eat this, don't eat that, and they really,
Kris (01:32:22):
I hate telling people what to do. I really do. I hate being a manager. I used to work at a grocery store, and I was starting to get to the point where I was in a managerial position and I really didn't like it. I just want to be responsible for my own gains, and that's it. No one else
Jayd (01:32:41):
Is. Well, I think that that's why it's so cozy, because it does definitely feel like a judgment free zone. And I think that that's why it is so inspiring, because I don't have to do anything that you are talking about, but seeing how you do it and how it's not really a big deal, you just do it even though sometimes you don't want to do it. That I think lowers the bar of entry for a lot of people because you are not making such a big deal out of it. And so many fitness influencers are just really in your face. And they also participate a lot in the shame culture. And I feel,
Kris (01:33:21):
Oh, I hate that. I can't. I try my best. And this is something that I have specifically tried to work on over the past few years because I think it's just something that we develop over time. Being in the society that we're in, it's just not even intentionally just accidentally shaming people. And I really hate it. And I'm sure that I have done it to other people without meaning to, and it has been done to me without people meaning to do it. But yeah, I try really hard to think about what I'm saying to other people and to my audience, I guess, and not to do that thing.
Jayd (01:34:09):
Yeah.
Kris (01:34:09):
Yeah. I mean, even just, and I hate to put her on blast, but I was out with Joey and his parents a couple weeks ago, and I love his parents. We have a really good relationship. I actually worked for them for many years, but the first thing his mom said to me, I hadn't seen them for a little bit, was like, oh, you look tired. And I was like, God, Jesus. And literally that morning I was filming for YouTube and I said to the camera, wow, I think I look great. My skin looks so good. And the first thing thing she says to me is, you look tired. I was like, I think I'm just old. You're not used to seeing me old. I'm like, almost 40, bro, please.
Jayd (01:34:57):
She's also, she's from Hong Kong.
Kris (01:34:58):
Right, right.
Jayd (01:35:00):
And I think there's also what I've noticed with a lot of Asian moms, they do tend to make comments like that
Kris (01:35:10):
Because
Jayd (01:35:11):
They feel it's not like a shaming,
Kris (01:35:15):
It's just the culture.
(01:35:18)
But it's also something that I have trained out of my own mom. And my mom is American from rural America, and my dad is Korean, but he's also very American because he was adopted. But my mom used to say things to me, not in a mean way, in more of a concerned way, because my weight fluctuates with the bulking and the cutting, and I've kind of trained her out of making comments about my body. She'll be like, oh, you look so skinny is everything. And I'll just be like, I am on a fitness journey. This is what happens. I lose and I gain weight. So she kind of doesn't really say that stuff to me anymore, and it's pretty nice.
Jayd (01:36:05):
That's good. I'm glad.
Kris (01:36:07):
Yeah.
Jayd (01:36:07):
Yeah.
Kris (01:36:08):
Sometimes you got to clap back a little bit.
Jayd (01:36:12):
What makes you think it's appropriate to make comments on my body?
Kris (01:36:15):
That's what I'm saying.
Jayd (01:36:17):
Yeah. And sometimes, especially from moms, and I think there's a lot of, they're afraid on a primal level, you have to look a certain way so that you can fit into society, so that you can find a man so that you can be safe, and so that you can, you know what I mean? So you can be taken care of, which those things don't really apply anymore, but they can't help it because they're concerned. They want to make sure you're okay. They have to say something.
Kris (01:36:42):
Right. To give my mom credit, when I was younger, in my teenage years, I was very thin and not in an unhealthy way. I didn't have an ED and I was eating, but I was just very thin. And there were definitely times where I accidentally fainted just because I had low blood sugar or whatever. So part of it could be that, but I literally have not been that person for 20 years.
Jayd (01:37:13):
Right. And I'm happy that she's responded to the training.
Kris (01:37:18):
Yeah. Yeah.
Jayd (01:37:20):
Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me and talking to my audience. I really, really wanted them to hear from you some tips on cutting and things to think about while cutting, because you are really at this point for me, you are the go-to of best tips, and could you tell people where they can find you and interact with you
Kris (01:37:47):
To be 100% real with you? I'm basically only on YouTube and my channel is terrible. He may is spelled HIME.
Jayd (01:37:56):
Perfect. I'll put some text on the screen so people can go to
Kris (01:38:00):
It.
Jayd (01:38:00):
And there will be a link in the description to this video when it goes live on YouTube. And it will also be in the show notes for the podcast listeners. Same. I really have pulled back a lot of my social media, and I feel like I'm living my best life right now. I love just being on YouTube,
Kris (01:38:18):
Honestly. Yeah. I straight up deleted most of my other accounts, and besides YouTube, I just kind of am browsing other forms of social media and not really posting anymore.
Jayd (01:38:32):
It feels really nice after
Kris (01:38:34):
It does.
Jayd (01:38:35):
Being a content creator for five years or more to kind of scale back and really just focus. It's been nice.
Kris (01:38:43):
Yeah. I think for me, my content is better.
Jayd (01:38:47):
Me too.
Kris (01:38:47):
Because my attention is less divided.
Jayd (01:38:49):
Exactly. Yeah. So please give Terrible Hime a subscribe. She is posting all about her fat loss journey. She's got six more weeks to go, so go and take a look at her videos and comment and check out her other content as well on the planners and stuff. And it's a really good channel to also just leave on while you are doing stuff because it's just kind of relaxing sort of
Kris (01:39:19):
Content. A lot of people tell me that they put on my videos while they do their cardio.
Jayd (01:39:23):
Hell yeah. That's great. And
Kris (01:39:25):
That's what I do with Jaydigains's videos up, put them on while I'm doing my cardio.
Jayd (01:39:30):
Oh my God. No way. I didn't know that.
Kris (01:39:32):
Yeah. Oh, wow. Well, I saved them. I get the Discord notifications. I'm like, Ooh, new video. I'm going to save that for later.
Jayd (01:39:41):
Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Yeah, I think that's everything. Thank you. Thank you again so much. Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you found this discussion to be helpful. I always love sitting down and talking to Kris because she has just such a huge amount of knowledge when it comes to fitness building muscle and burning fat. Leave a comment in the comment section below if you're watching this on YouTube, and let me know what you thought about this episode. And if you don't mind, go ahead and give this video if you found it helpful, and subscribe to my channel to always get notified whenever I drop new videos. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure to follow the show so that you get new episodes delivered right to your device. Thank you again so much. I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 48: Feeling Bloated? Why Bloating Happens and How to Relieve It
Bloating happens to everyone—yes, even the fittest people you know! In this episode, I’m diving into the common causes of bloating, why it’s completely normal, and how you can manage it in a healthy way.
I also tackle the unrealistic beauty standards that make so many people obsess over having a flat belly, even though that’s not a true indicator of health or fitness. Instead of chasing an unrealistic ideal, I’ll help you shift your focus to real health markers like resting heart rate, blood pressure, and strength.
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast.
Bloating happens to everyone—yes, even the fittest people you know! In this episode, I’m diving into the common causes of bloating, why it’s completely normal, and how you can manage it in a healthy way.
I also tackle the unrealistic beauty standards that make so many people obsess over having a flat belly, even though that’s not a true indicator of health or fitness. Instead of chasing an unrealistic ideal, I’ll help you shift your focus to real health markers like resting heart rate, blood pressure, and strength.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
🔹 The most common causes of bloating (and how to reduce them)
🔹 Why bloating doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy or doing something wrong
🔹 How social media and beauty standards distort our perception of what’s “normal”
🔹 Simple, effective strategies to relieve bloating, including:
✅ Staying hydrated
✅ Moving your body
✅ Managing fiber intake
✅ Understanding food sensitivities & gut health
🔹 Why a fit body doesn’t have to mean a flat belly—and why that’s okay!
🔗 Resources & Links:
🎯 Tune in next week for more expert tips to help you crush your fitness goals!
-
Jayd (00:00):
Bloating can mean bloating in your belly or in your abdominal area, which can often be experienced when you've eaten too quickly or you eat a really big meal that will make your belly feel more full and your belly will stick out more. But even if you eat a normal amount, if you are a really thin person or if you have a really small waist, it is normal and it is likely that after you eat your belly is probably going to be bigger. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years and I've created this podcast to share with you some of the tips that I share with my own personal training clients. In today's episode, we're going to talk about one of the most common questions that I get from my clients and followers, which is what do I do when I'm feeling bloated?
(01:01)
Now, I had this conversation with my Twitch chat while I was live on my Twitch channel. That's Twitch tv slash jaydigains, which you can follow if you like. And join me while I'm live on Tuesdays when I do a fitness and health stream. Now, feeling bloated is something that happens to everyone regardless of how fit you are or how long you've been working out. So in this episode I talk about what causes bloating and also I give some practical tips for what to do if you feel bloated. Before we get into the episode, if you are watching on YouTube, make sure to give this video a like and subscribe to the channel to keep up with more podcast updates. If you are listening to this podcast episode, make sure to follow the channel so that you always get the latest episodes. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:51)
I did want to talk about bloating today because that's something that people experience a lot. It's something that my clients ask me about a lot is like, oh, I feel really bloated today. What do I do when I feel bloated? And it's a cause for concern for a lot of people for a couple of different reasons. One, people have this kind of obsession with the way that their bellies look. And so when you are bloated, meaning your body is holding onto a lot of water, or maybe it's holding onto air, right, there's air, or maybe there's just you've eaten a lot of food and there's a lot of bulk of food actually in your digestive system, and so you may experience some bloating in your belly. And this can cause a concern for a lot of people because like I said, people tend to be kind of obsessed with their bellies and what their bellies look like, especially women.
(02:45)
I do want to say sometimes the obsession with the belly and how whether it looks bloated or lean can be an unhealthy fixation. As a millennial, I grew up with Britney Spears and pop history and then all the magazines that really favored having a flat tummy. And the reality though is that a flat tummy is not something that most people experience even healthy and fit people. It's not something that most healthy fit people experience. Most of the time when you look at fitness magazines or even just pop magazines where they have these models who have super flat tummies like Victoria's Secret models, et cetera, the way that their bodies look is not the way that their bodies look in that photo shoot is not the way that their bodies look most of the time. What a Victoria Secret model does in preparation for a photo shoot is not eat any solid foods for a few days being on a liquid diet, and they are also pretty severely dehydrated so that they look a lot more lean than what they actually naturally are.
(04:03)
So I think that we tend to have this unrealistic expectation of what our bellies and our bodies should look like and we are fit. You can be fit and not look like a Victoria's Secret model. In fact, Victoria's Secret models don't even look like Victoria's secret models most of the time. Okay? So that's something that you want to start to confront and maybe deconstruct in terms of your expectations of your body. You know what? There's a lot of different ways that a fit and healthy body looks like you can be fit and healthy with even a higher body fat percentage, and you can be very unhealthy at a very lean body fat percentage. You are not ugly and you are not unfit. If you're feeling bloated or if you feel like your belly looks flabby or if you feel like your belly isn't flat, that doesn't negate your level of fitness.
(04:58)
That doesn't mean that you're not fit if you don't have a flat belly. In fact, most fit people do not have a flat belly. To get a flat belly. You have to be a very low unhealthily, low body fat percentage, especially as a woman. And typically you're going to have to do things that are not healthy in order to achieve that look, which is why even Victoria models, Victoria's Secret models do not look like that most of the time. So you just kind of want to think about adjusting your expectations of what your belly looks like and what it should look like. Try to deconstruct that expectation that it should look flat all the time or at all. That's one thing that you want to kind of keep in mind. Yo five, you say the belly focus is the most popular form of body mafia.
(05:43)
I totally agree. I think that if you are healthy and you have a healthy body fat percentage, you exercise regularly, you eat healthy, you follow the healthy plate model, you're mindful of your calories and your protein intake. If you are living a fit lifestyle, you are a fit person, especially if you look at your health markers like resting heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, insulin levels. If all of those are healthy, then you are healthy regardless of what your belly looks like. And that type of body dysmorphia is something that I also struggle with and I have to constantly remind myself that I am healthy, I am strong, I look strong, right? Strong in my opinion, is better than skinny. When people are super, super lean, they're not actually their strongest being super, getting super, super lean. For most people, especially if they're stepping on a stage to compete in bodybuilding or in a bodybuilding competition or a physique competition, when they step on the stage is when in terms of their strength levels, they're at their lowest. So the leaner you, you do tend to lose muscle and lose strength.
(06:58)
What we want to do instead, what I encourage my clients to do instead is place more value on your actual health markers and on your actual strength and performance in the gym. Those are the most important things rather than how thick or thin lean or not lean or bloated your belly is. Okay. So that's thing number one for me. Flashback to the clip I made about my actual organs making my belly not flat. Yeah, exactly. So the other thing is especially if you're a woman, the expectation of having a flat belly is so unrealistic because in order to be healthy as a woman, you do need to have a certain level of fat in your system. We as women or as female having female bodies, our bodies need more fat than male bodies and it's normal and healthy to have that little, I call it the fertility pooch, right at the very bottom of your belly.
(08:01)
That's where your uterus is, right? That's where your organs are, and especially if it's around the time of the month where it's that time of the month, you're going to have more inflammation in that area. So your fertility pooch is going to be bigger. That doesn't mean that you're ugly. It doesn't mean that you're not fit. That's literally natural. And I will also challenge that because in another life I was an archeologist and I studied a Bronze Age and early iron age archeology, and I also spent some time studying prehistoric societies too. And in the Mediterranean and prehistoric societies in the Mediterranean and leading way early, way early in human history and also into ancient history, that fertility pooch was celebrated as the ideal feminine body. The ideal feminine body had that fertility pooch. You see this on the Socratic figurines, different figurines that were made around the Mediterranean.
(09:12)
We see these figurines of the female figure that include a little fertility pooch, and that was considered beauty like the goddess, right? So when you look in the mirror, especially if it's around that time of the month and you're feeling more bloated and you got more of that more exaggerated fertility pooch, maybe even reframe it in your mind like hell yeah, that's that goddess body, that's that fertility pooch, that's peak femininity baby. That's a way that I try to reframe it for myself is be like, rather than seeing that standard, rather than feeling like I need to reach that standard of having a flat belly when I have that little fertility pooch, it's like, hell yeah, because I'm a literal woman and that's what it looks like to have a healthy female body and celebrate it. So that's what I wanted to say about the fertility pooch.
(10:09)
But bloating also can mean a lot of other things too. Bloating can mean bloating in your belly or in your abdominal area, which can often be experienced when you've eaten too quickly or you eat a really big meal that will make your belly feel more full and your belly will stick out more. But even if you eat a normal amount, if you are a really thin person or if you have a really small waist, it is normal and it is likely that after you eat your belly is probably going to be bigger. The more that you eat throughout the day, your belly is probably going to get a tiny bit bigger, but that is normal and it is healthy and that's okay. I mean, look at snakes, right? I am a person with a small waist. I've always had that bone structure where my waist is small, which means whenever I eat something, especially if I eat something that is high in carbohydrates or high in sodium, I am like a snake where you can see in the snake's body where the food is, you can literally see it.
(11:21)
It's very noticeable or it's noticeable to me because I have been brainwashed by the flat belly obsession culture, and that's okay, and that's normal, and that's just part of having a body, okay? Now, sometimes you might find that if you eat something that is high in sodium or high in carbohydrates, that will probably also lead to you feeling more bloated. High sodium, high car carbohydrates tend to cause your body overall to retain more water. And so you might experience bloating that's beyond the belly, and also you see less definition in your legs and your shoulders. Your arms, maybe your face will maybe appear a little bit more puffy. And you can see this a lot. If you ever watch boxers or mixed martial arts fights at the weigh-ins, the fighters will look a lot more lean because they're trying to make weight. So leading up to the weigh-ins, the night before the fights, they will be dehydrated.
(12:30)
They will have not eaten solid foods likely because they're trying to get their body weight down as much as possible. And there's a huge difference between how they look in their weigh-ins. And then when you see them the next day at night, their bodies look so different, they're a lot more puffy. They lose a lot of the muscle definition that they might've had at weigh-ins because during that time in between weigh-ins and when they actually fight, fighters will be carb loading to make sure that their bodies have, and also with sodium foods too, they're trying to load up on energy to make sure that their bodies have the energy so that they can have that and use it during the fight. This is Rhonda Rousey's, a perfect example of this. Rhonda Rousey, her weigh-ins. I remember there was one fight, I don't remember exactly which one it was, but you saw it in her weigh-ins before she looked super, super lean, and then the next day when she stepped into the octagon is just like the untrained eye would think that she probably gained 10 pounds of fat or something.
(13:36)
But no, she was bloated because she'd carb bloated and she was hydrated and ate plenty. So that also is something that you can experience based on how you eat and your hydration levels as well. So bloating can sometimes happen and you can see it in the face and in the rest of the body as well. How dare you have organs? You leave my baby out of my food baby out of this, right? I mean, we like to say after you eat junk food or if you go to a restaurant, you eat a lot of food that's really sugary or has a lot of sodium in it. Maybe after a treat meal is when you'll experience the most significant bloating, but it's not just from your treat foods. Eating high fiber foods can also cause bloating, especially if you're not used to eating a lot of fiber.
(14:25)
So that would be whole grains, vegetables, especially your starchy vegetables like sweet potato or potatoes. Those also can cause contribute to water retention and gas buildup too. So it's not necessarily even always a reflection of having a bad diet or treating yourself or cheating on your diet. It can even when you're doing everything. So another thing that also happens, this happens to me every single time when you're traveling, traveling is the worst that I tend to get bloated. If you've been sitting for a long time or you have a change in your routine or you're eating things that you don't normally eat, even changes in the water. Water in different states and in different cities is different. Even that can contribute to bloating. So all of these things can cause bloating either in the abdomen or throughout your entire body, and it's totally normal. Everybody experiences them.
(15:25)
So let's talk about some of the common causes for bloating. It's very normal, it's very natural, but let's take a look at the mechanics of why you get bloated in terms of digestive and dietary causes. One main reason why you might experience bloating is you are swallowing too much air. Now, this can come from eating really fast. You're literally swallowing pockets of air. It can also come from drinking carbonated beverages, alcoholic or soft drinks. Chewing gum is also a pretty common cause of swallowing air because when you're chewing gum, you're actually so gross, it's going to sound so gross, but you're actually getting little bubbles of air caught in your saliva and then swallowing that. So swallowing too much air can cause you to have air buildup. So if you find yourself burping a lot or farting a lot and you're feeling bloated and you know that you have eaten really quickly recently, or you've had a lot of carbonated beverages or you've chewed gum, that could be a cause of your bloating.
(16:31)
High sodium intake, I mentioned that before. Sodium causes your body to retain more water. That's just chemistry. So if you ever have a pile of salt on your plate and you drop a little bit of water onto the plate, the sodium is going to absorb all of that water. And that happens in our bodies too. If you have eaten a lot of sodium, it's going to cause it's going to absorb a lot of the water that's in your system causing you to retain more water. And when you are retaining more water, your body's going to be heavier. It's also going to look puffier, and you're probably going to have a little bit more bloating in your belly. Like I mentioned before, high fiber intake, especially if you're not used to eating high fiber foods. If you have recently eaten something that's high in fiber that can cause gas to build up and bloating, but this is something that does get better over time as your body gets used to eating more and more fiber, you should experience this less.
(17:39)
It's really most prominent when you first start to eat a lot of fiber, which is why I recommend if you are going to be changing up your diet to eat healthier, you want to start eating more fiber, do it very gradually. Gradually increase the amount of fiber that you eat every day. Oh, lactose intolerance and sensitivity. Some people are lactose intolerant and they don't even realize it, or they have a sensitivity which is not exactly intolerance and you're not exactly going to get sick. But when you may notice that when you eat dairy or when you drink milk or you have something that has dairy in it, if you experience a lot of bloating and a lot of gastric distress, that can also cause bloating. I have an allergy to pork and to peanuts, and there was a time in my life where I ate peanut butter every single day.
(18:37)
I didn't realize I was allergic. And then when I found out that I was allergic, I continued to eat peanut butter every day because I loved it so much. And that time in my life I regularly would be super duper sick in my stomach and I had a lot of stomach pain all the time, and I thought that that was just normal. I thought that was just normal. But I'll never forget when I stopped eating peanut butter every day when I finally gave it up and my stomach started to feel better and I was like, whoa. Is this what normal people feel like? Because I wasn't bloated all the time. I didn't have stomach aches all the time, and my allergy to peanuts was mild enough that I could eat it without, I didn't asphyxiate or anything, but it just caused a lot of gastric distress, and I didn't realize how much pain I was in until I stopped eating that food that I was intolerant to.
(19:37)
So whether it's lactose or something else that you might have an intolerance to, you may be eating something that it just doesn't agree with your body. So it's worthwhile getting tested for those things, getting tested for food allergies or lactose intolerance. If you suspect that you have a food sensitivity, you also can do an elimination diet. I would recommend doing this under the guidance of a dietician or a doctor, though I have a couple of friends who've had to do that, figured out that they had cash emoto's and they were sick all the time because they had cash emoto and they were eating all these foods that exacerbated their symptoms. So you might do an elimination diet for a number of reasons, but again, I would recommend seeing a dietician or a doctor and doing your elimination diet under their guidance. And if you have health insurance, check your health insurance because a lot of times you can see a dietician and get coverage for it, full coverage a lot of times for a certain number of sessions per year with a dietician.
(20:42)
So you may not even have to actually pay for it out of pocket to see a dietician. And if you suspect that you have an intolerance, that's what I would recommend you do. You may also have gut imbalances. It's not uncommon for people to experience an overgrowth or an undergrowth of certain types of gut bacteria. I know this is something a lot of people don't like to talk about, but our bodies actually are made up in large part of different species of bacteria and yeast, and there's a certain balance in the ecosystem that our bellies need in order to operate the best. The gut bacteria, the yeast, all of those guys, they do actually help with digestion. They are an essential part of your system. But when you get an overgrowth or you don't have enough of the good guys that can cause gastric distress, that can cause bloating and other symptoms as well.
(21:43)
Where these imbalances come from a lot of times is actually if you've been on antibiotics, antibiotics take out the bad bacteria if you have a bacterial infection, but they also sometimes will take out the good guys too. So if you experience a lot of gastric distress or tummy trouble when you've been on antibiotics, you may need to go on a probiotic or eat probiotic foods like yogurt, pickled foods, kimchi, pickled ginger, my favorite, or actually just take a probiotic supplement again, I would check with your doctor and check with a dietician before making that decision though. And artificial sweeteners, oh man, this is one. This is a big one to watch out for artificial sweeteners like sugar alcohols. So artificial sweeteners are generally kind of, they're safe, they're safe for consumption, but they are a little bit harder for our bodies to digest, and they can ferment in the gut, which the fermentation process causes gas.
(22:51)
So if you have been chewing gum that has a lot of sugar alcohols for its sweetener, you're kind of getting a double whammy there, right? One of my favorite gums, I don't chew anymore because it was giving me a lot of gas. It was making me burp all the time, and my tummy kind of hurt because I had gas. It was like, oh, was it? It's bubble mint. The bubble mint gum. I don't remember which. I don't remember which brand that is, but I can't be trusted with it. I will chew it all day. And it uses sugar alcohol as a sweetener. Sugar alcohols are often used in protein bars as well, and other supplements like that. So just if you're eating a lot of those health foods or fitness foods like protein bars and whatnot, if it is flavored with sugar alcohols and you're also experiencing a lot of gas, that could be why.
(23:44)
So just something to keep an eye on as well. You always want to be in the practice of checking your food labels right before you eat stuff. Sugar alcohol gives you bubble guts. That's very common for people. It was a meme a couple years ago. There was a meme a couple years ago where people were complaining that there were these gummy bears that were giving them upset stomachs, and it was because people were eating a lot of them, and these gummy bears were flavored with sugar alcohol. Do you remember that? That was a couple years ago. If you look up the reviews for sugar-free gummy bears on Amazon, they are full of people talking about how it gave them the runs and messed their tummies up. So yeah, those are things to be mindful of the sugar free stuff. Sometimes you think you're doing something good for your fitness by eating sugar free because you're like, oh, well, I'm not eating unnecessary calories.
(24:39)
If it's sugar, alcohol or some other artificial sweetener, it could be causing bloating and or upset tummy too. So just be mindful of that. So let's talk about effective ways to relieve bloating. Now that we've talked about common causes. In the short term, if your bloating is due to water retention, your body is holding onto a lot of water because you've eaten sodium rich foods or maybe carbohydrate rich foods because carbohydrates are stored in our muscles with water. The way that we can get that to be released by our bodies is to move, get moving, do some kind of activity. You could exercise, you could work out, or you could just get up and get moving. So people in the chat were saying how they go for a walk to help relieve their bloating. So light moving like walking or stretching helps to get your muscles working and burning through the carbohydrates, or it's the carbohydrates are stored as glycogen in your muscles.
(25:36)
So glycogen is stored with water, and when your body goes to use that glycogen as energy, it releases the water as well, and then you will either pee the water out or breathe it out through your breathing exhalation or you'll sweat it out. So getting up and getting moving or doing some kind of an exercise can help to burn through that energy, release that water. Also getting up and moving stimulates digestion because you're moving your torso around instead of staying stuck in one position. So you can help relieve the bloating in terms of the water retention, but also the bulk of the food. You can move that along by getting yourself moving along. And another reason why exercise is really helpful for this too is deep breathing. But you could also just do some deep breathing exercises like maybe do a yoga meditation or a mindfulness meditation.
(26:24)
Do some deep breathing because that also can move your diaphragm around, which will move your torso around and which can aid in digestion. And then you can also do some abdominal massage like rubbing your tummy. They actually have these massages for babies that are experiencing gastric distress because babies like poor things. God bless their little hearts, they don't know how to fart on their own or burp on their own or poop on their own, right? When infants are just newborn, you have to help them with everything. And passing gas is one of those things. So in the parenting circles, there's little exercises that you can do to help the baby to pass gas along, and it comes down to drawing on their tummy in a certain shape and doing different things, moving their legs around.
(27:21)
Well, There was a trend on TikTok where people were doing that to each other. Adults were doing that to each other, and it actually works a lot of those same exercises if you get a friend or a spouse to bicycle your feet and then move you around and do it, it works on adults too. So that could be a fun bonding activity for you and your partner, but you also can Just rub your own tummy. So abdominal massage helps and getting up and moving, all that kind of thing. These are things that you can do. Drinking lots of water can help to pass things along as well.
(27:58)
That's kind of the main thing that I do when I'm feeling bloated. If I have had a treat meal or if I just feel bloated and I'm retaining water or I'm retaining a lot of gas, I just down a bunch of water. You guys have seen my giant water bottle here. This is my gigantic two liter bottle, and I drink out of this all day. I'll probably drink two of these a day, but I'll drink more on the days that I feel super bloated. So drinking liquids, keeping those liquids flowing can help to flush all of that out. Now, long-term strategies to prevent bloating, if it's something that's chronic and it's bothering you and you really don't like it, slow down when you're eating.
(28:38)
Remember, when we eat really quickly or chewing gum, swallowing air will cause your belly to be more bloated. Chew your food for a longer time before you swallow to avoid gulping down all of that air. And remember, our saliva is the first stage of digestion. Our saliva isn't just there to make food wet, right? It actually has enzymes in it that start to pre-B, break down the food before it ever reaches the rest of the digestive tract. So when you take time to break the food down with your teeth and with your saliva, then it has to spend less time in your digestive tract getting broken down versus when you gulp down food without chewing and without letting coating it with saliva properly. It has to spend more time in your gut breaking down, and the more time that it spends in your gut breaking down, the more likely you are to develop gas.
(29:36)
So slow down when you're eating, and then we talked about it a couple of times. Manage your fiber intake. Don't go crazy with it. If you're not used to eating fiber, introduce it very slowly and balance that out with water intake. If you eat a bunch of fiber but you don't drink enough water, you're especially going to feel bloated, so make sure you balance it with enough water in tank. Also, if it's a chronic problem for you and you do drink carbonated drinks, you eat artificial sweeteners or you drink stuff with artificial sweeteners, it may be time for you to start cutting that stuff down. You don't have to get rid of it all together. You don't have to go full cold Turkey. But it is a good idea to start to kind of replace that stuff with other things that are not carbonated or that don't use artificial sweeteners.
(30:25)
If you drink soda all day, which is something that I know a lot of people have a habit of, if you drink soda all day, start to replace some of those sodas with another non-carbonated beverage like water, and if you need to put some kind of a flavoring in the water to help yourself to drink it more, just be careful because the artificial sweeteners can also cause gas too. And then you want to also make sure that you are being mindful of your gut health. Eat plenty of probiotic rich foods like yogurt, keefer, fermented vegetables, anything fermented really is going to help with your gut health and get some good bacteria in there. I eat yogurt every day. That's kind of a mainstay for me. There's also the option of doing probiotic supplement, but again, with supplements, I always am very wary about them because supplements are not a very well-regulated industry.
(31:20)
There's not the standards that there are the same standards for supplements as there are for food. I'm always a little bit, ooh, about supplements. Do it under the guidance of a doctor or a dietician because they will give you the best advice on which ones are best for you and manage stress. Sometimes our hormones can cause bloating as well. I definitely tend to be more bloated when I'm stressed. So managing your stress can also be helpful for if you experience a lot of bloating, if you know that you're stressed, a lot of times these other things can help. But also it's good to practice stress relief practices, which exercise can be one of those deep breathing exercises. Also, one of those. And also like eating healthy, you'll notice a difference when you eat real food and if you're following the healthy plate model, your body and your mind and your gut, they're all interrelated.
(32:14)
So the better you take care of one piece, the better the other pieces get as well. So managing stress can be helpful, and also taking care of yourself can help to relieve stress. So it's like a self-feeding thing. So that's my guidance for if you're experiencing bloating or if you experience bloating a lot. These are some of the common causes. These are some of the things that you can do about it, but also, especially if you're not really uncomfortable, if you're not experiencing physical discomfort, don't sweat it. It's not a big deal. You do not have to have a super flat tummy or be super, super lean all the time in order to be fit. The two are not related fit people. Experience bloating and being super lean is not necessarily fit. But if you experience a lot of bloating and it's uncomfortable for you, or maybe you just want to maybe look a little leaner, maybe you got some photos coming up or something, follow the guidance in terms of how to reduce the bloating that we had that they were talking about earlier.
(33:17)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you found it helpful. Let me know what you thought in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube. And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the channel or follow. If you're listening to the podcast. If you like more information on me and the services that I offer, check out my website, jaydigains.com. I do offer training plans, meal plans, and I also have a membership site right on my website that you can join to get training tips, nutrition tips, recipes, and more every single month. Just go to jaydigains.com and sign up from the membership on the front page. Thank you again for watching this episode or listening to it, and I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 47: What to Do When You Don’t Feel Motivated to Work Out
In this episode, I dive into strategies for maintaining workout consistency even when motivation is low. I share personal experiences and client stories to illustrate how progress in fitness can happen regardless of emotional state.
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode, I dive into strategies for maintaining workout consistency even when motivation is low. I share personal experiences and client stories to illustrate how progress in fitness can happen regardless of emotional state.
Key Takeaways:
✅ Start with small, manageable workout goals to build momentum.
✅ Deload workouts when needed to avoid burnout.
✅ Revisit and realign fitness goals to stay on track.
✅ Make workouts more enjoyable with cozy cardio, socializing, or switching up routines.
✅ Practice self-compassion and acceptance—show up and stay disciplined even when motivation dips.
Tune in to discover how to stay consistent and make progress even when motivation feels hard to find!
🔗 Resources & Links:
🎯 Tune in next week for more expert tips to help you crush your fitness goals!
Downloadable Training Plans:
-
Jayd (00:00):
You can go into your workout thinking this is bullshit, and you can be like, I really don't want to do this, and you still show up and do it. You'll get gains from that. So it doesn't really matter how you feel. You can still make significant progress in your fitness even when you're not really feeling it. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA, Jaydigains. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to approach your workouts. If you're feeling super low motivation, no matter your level of fitness, whether you have been working out for decades or if you are a brand new beginner to fitness, you're probably going to experience at some point this feeling of, I really don't want to do my workout. This happens to me all the time. I think I probably don't feel like doing my workout most of the time.
(01:00)
Every once in a while I feel like, oh yeah, I'm so excited to get my workout in, but I still show up and I still do the thing, right? Because the gains are important to me and I'm committed and disciplined. So in today's episode, I'm going to go a little bit more into detail about how you can stay consistent even when you're not feeling like doing the thing. I'm going to share some of my own experience and the things that my clients have also learned and sticking to their workout routines even when they're not really feeling super motivated. Now, before we move forward in the episode, make sure to subscribe to this channel if you are watching on YouTube and make sure to like the video. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure that you follow the podcast so that you get notified anytime there's a new episode.
(01:49)
You can also check out my website, Jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com. If you're interested in learning more about me and the services that I offer, I do offer online personal training, and I also have a ton of downloadable workout plans that you can check out as well as a membership site where I post new content every single week, including meal plans, recipes, workout programs, training tips, nutrition tips, and fat loss tips. You can find all of that on my website, Jaydigains.com. Now, without further ado, let's get into the episode and talk about what to do to help yourself stay consistent even when you're not feeling motivated.
(02:31)
Now, the first thing that you should keep in mind when it comes to your fitness, when it comes to your body, feeling motivated, doesn't really matter. You do not have to feel super, super motivated to make gains. The beautiful thing about our bodies is that they don't care what kind of attitude you have. If you show up and you do the thing or you do part of the thing and get your workouts in or you stay active, your body is going to give you the gains from that. So it's very forgiving. It's not work where you kind of have to show up and have a somewhat good attitude and mask how you feel. You can go into your workout thinking this is bullshit, and you can be like, I really don't want to do this, and you still show up and do it. You'll get gains from that.
(03:16)
So it doesn't really matter how you feel. You can still make significant progress in your fitness even when you're not really feeling it. The other thing to keep in mind is that motivation is just a feeling and just like any other feeling, it's going to come and go and it's going to fluctuate depending on a lot of different factors, how much sleep you've had, the total amount of stress that you have in your everyday life and other factors like your nutrition can also affect your motivation. So there's a lot of things that can affect it. The presence or absence of motivation is really kind of not a big deal when it comes to whether you make gains or not. However, it can make it hard for you to stay consistent, but the most important thing when it comes to making gains, reaching your fat loss goals, your muscle building goals or your strength goals or your athletic performance goals is that you show up and you put the work in regardless of how you feel.
(04:10)
But if you have low motivation, that can make it harder to show up. So these are a few of the strategies that I recommend my clients use and that I use for myself to help me stay consistent and show up even when I'm not really feeling like it. Number one is to start small. I think it's really helpful to think of what's your bare minimum workout that you can do for yourself. Sometimes that can be just as simple as a 10 minute workout where you're going to walk on the treadmill or get on a cardio machine and then do some stretches. Some days that's all you're going to have in the tank. Some days that's all you're going to be able to really think about, especially if you're doing a really high intensity or high volume weightlifting routine or maybe you're doing athletic training and the workout itself is something that takes a lot of energy and you're just kind of like, I don't want to even think about that right now.
(05:04)
Sometimes when you just tell yourself, I'm just going to start small, I'm just going to start with the warmup. I'm going to warm up and see how I feel afterwards, so I'm going to get on the treadmill or I'm going to get on the cardio machine for just five to 10 minutes, and then I'm going to do some dynamic stretches and then maybe some priming exercises, and if I'm still feeling like, you know what? I really just don't have it in me today, then go home. But what often happens when I tell my clients, just do the bare minimum, show up, do the warmup and then see how you feel. Most of the time, once you actually get moving, once your feet are on that machine or once you are doing your stretches, your brain is actually thinking like, okay, I could probably do a little bit more.
(05:49)
The motivation often comes from doing the thing, so don't make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse. The motivation is not what gets you to show up. You show up, you do the thing, and then you get more motivated. So it's kind of like one of those old fashioned water pumps where you would have to take a cup of water with you to the pump, pour the water in, and then be able to actually access the water from the well. Motivation is like that. You kind of have to get started to rev the engine a little bit to prime the pump, and then you might surprise yourself at how motivated you feel after you just start with that really small goal and achievable goal of just doing 10 to 15 minutes of your warmup. Now, another thing that you can do, which is what I tell my clients, is if you need to just deload that workout, if you're feeling really fucked up mentally and you do the warmup and you're still feeling like I am dreading this workout, then that could be a sign that you may be over training or you may be overstressed and your body and your brain need less stress.
(06:58)
So your body and your brain oftentimes read the stress stimulus from your workouts. If you're doing high intensity or high volume, it will read that as the same thing is emotional and mental stress that comes from other areas of your life, and there's only so much stress that your system as a whole can handle before it starts to break down, before you start to lose efficiency. And so your system may be overwhelmed and that's okay. That happens to everyone. So in that case, what you can do is just reduce the overall intensity of your workout, still do the workout, do the exercises that are in your exercise plan, but instead of going to an RPE nine where you're stopping just before muscle failure, maybe you leave two or three reps in the tank and you stop a lot sooner, just think about practicing the motions of the exercises rather than approaching muscle failure.
(07:51)
Or if you're doing strength training, just stop before you get that CNS fatigue starting to set in, right? Deloading is always an option, and there may be seasons of your life where you need to deload almost every workout that's happened for some of my clients. Now, this doesn't mean that you're going to lose all of your gains. It will make your gains slower because you won't be pushing yourself, and when it comes to building muscle and getting stronger, you do need to be able to challenge yourself approach muscle failure and approach form failure in order for your body to get that stimulus that it's time to grow. But if you are encountering a lot of stresses in your life already and your system just can't handle the overload, the progressive overload of stress, and it's very, very, very fine line between stressing your body too much to the point where you become too stressed out or overwhelmed and burned out in those seasons, it's okay to just take a step back, make your workouts less intense.
(08:56)
It's actually going to help you in the long run to reach your goals if you do that versus just stopping showing up for your workouts altogether, which is sometimes what happens for people, they'll feel that low motivation or they'll feel like, I can't really push myself and they just don't work out at all. I would so much rather you show up and deload and do that for a couple of weeks if you need to until you feel like you're mentally and energetically in a better place that you can start to turn the volume up or turn the intensity up because that consistency of showing up is going to, you will get gains from that. You will very likely not lose gains from working out that way, and you'll keep the habit going. And again, showing up and doing the thing will fuel your motivation in the long run, much more than just falling off the wagon completely and not showing up at all.
(09:49)
Now, number two, there's a distinction between having a day where you're just not feeling like it and your motivation for that day is low versus if you notice for yourself a pattern of feeling low motivation over the course of a number of days, a number of weeks, like a long-term, just I don't want to do this. When that happens, it may be a sign that you need to revisit your goals and revisit your why. It may be that your current workout program is no longer in alignment with what is actually important to you. You may actually need to change up what you're doing for your workouts to align with something that is either more important to you or better suited to the season of life that you're in right now. Perfect example for this is last year around the holidays, I was trying to be in a power lifting program and I was making a lot of success, but because of the stress of the holidays and the election and a lot of interpersonal stuff that was going on in my life, I was experiencing a lot of stress, which was making me dread my workouts.
(11:04)
I started really dreading lifting the bar and I started dreading the heavier weights that I was having to put on the bar. Every workout and the progressive overload was becoming too daunting with everything considered going on in my life. And so I approached my coach and we decided to switch up my program to just focus on hypertrophy and muscle gains, which for me is a lot less stressful of a type of programming versus power lifting where you're lifting heavy weights and it can often trigger a fight or flight response, especially when you're getting into those higher weights or doing AMRAP sets as many reps as possible. So we scaled my workouts down in the sense of how intense they were. We scaled up the volume to really focus on muscle gains, and that helped me so much. I felt so much more motivated to show up to my workouts.
(12:02)
I was able to stick to my workout program a lot better than towards the end of the power lifting block. So sometimes that's the call that you have to make. In general, really high intensity blocks like a strength block for power lifting is going to be a lot more stress on your system. You're going to get a lot more central nervous system fatigue from that, and if your system is already fatigued from outside stressors, that something to consider about if you're feeling this low motivation, you may need to switch up your workout program. Now, this doesn't mean that you completely give up on your goals when you have to switch gears like this. When it comes to your fitness, whether you are improving your strength, improving your muscle size or hypertrophy, improving your cardiovascular fitness or in a calorie deficit, prioritizing fat loss, any progress that you make within any program is a net positive for your fitness.
(13:00)
Sometimes though, we need to switch gears and focus on different aspects of our fitness according to what is important to us at that time. So if you've been in a fat loss phase for a while and you've been really focusing on trimming fat, and then that may reach a point where it's not as important to you anymore because maybe you've hit a plateau or maybe your gains have slowed down, maybe you're in a recomp and your body weight isn't going down, although you are seeing gains in the gym and your clothes are fitting more loosely. So if that's the case, you may want to place your focus on why am I showing up for my workouts? It's not so much to burn fat anymore. I want to continue to see myself getting stronger, and when you switch that as your why is like I want to see myself getting stronger, more muscular, you may experience more motivation because that is something that you're seeing active gains in on a week by week basis.
(13:52)
Whereas especially if you're in a recomp, the gains are just slower in terms of your fat loss and you're not necessarily going to see the scale number going down. Keep in mind, I did actually do an entire episode of the Coaching Corner podcast on signs that you are in a recomp phase and ways that you can track your progress even if the scale isn't moving. So make sure to check out that episode. It's episode number 40. You can check that out on the YouTube channel, or you can go to the actual podcast site for episode 40, so revisit your whys and try to reconnect with your goals or maybe shift the importance that you place on different goals to give yourself a little bit of time to focus on some different aspect of your fitness. Now, number three, another thing that I really suggest is to try to make it enjoyable.
(14:40)
Try to make your workouts as enjoyable as possible. A few years ago, there was a trend on TikTok where a lot of specifically women were doing what was called cozy cardio, where they would do their cardio at home and they would have their treadmill in front of their TV, and they would set the lights to be really dim, put their LED lights on to make the lighting really soft and rainbowy, and they would have a yummy beverage as well as their water, and they'd put a favorite show on the TV or a movie and they would do their cardio walking or cycling or whatever. While they have done all of these other things to make the experience more pleasurable, more cozy, and more comfortable, these are all great ideas for ways that you can make your workout experience more enjoyable. But there's a lot of other ways that you can do this too.
(15:31)
If you enjoy being around other people, if you feel like other people give you energy, consider joining a gym or maybe taking a few group fitness classes. You can also find a workout buddy who will show up and do the workout with you. A lot of people find this super motivational, and some people really do enjoy having a home gym so that they can work out in a setting that they're in control of and they can decorate it how they like. Also, if you want to talk to people, but maybe work out from your home gym, streaming your workouts to a social media platform like Twitch or TikTok or Instagram are great ways to connect with other people and socialize while you're working out in your own space. Again, you can switch up your training program, use a different form of exercise and try a different form of exercise.
(16:20)
Something gets that is exciting to you or that you can look forward to take a break from the type of training that maybe you are a little bit bored with. If you don't listen to your own music, maybe start taking some headphones with you to the gym and putting on some music that you really enjoy that gets you pumped or that gets you in the state of mind that you feel really good about. All of these are great ideas for how you can make the experience of working out more enjoyable for yourself. And lastly, I can't really stress enough how important it is to practice self-compassion and acceptance, right? It is okay for you to feel how you feel. How you feel is not wrong. If you feel low motivation about your workouts, this doesn't mean that you're failing. It doesn't mean that you're going to fail or that you're never going to reach your goals.
(17:11)
Remember that our feelings, they come and go. They're often a signal to something that's going on in our lives that we need to be aware of, right? Our feelings are never wrong. They're just an alert system, and if you're feeling the alert system go off that you're not wanting to do your workouts and your system is kind of rejecting this practice, then you need to really reconsider the things that we talked about in the podcast episode of what maybe needs to change, but also keep in mind that sometimes you're just not going to feel like doing it, but show up anyway. Have the discipline to show up anyway, because you may feel better once you start, and some days you're just going to hate it the whole time, and that's okay because your body is still going to give you gains from that.
(18:01)
Thank you so much for watching. If you are on YouTube or listening to this podcast episode, again, my name is Jayd Harrison, AKA, Jaydigains. You can find out more about me and the services that I offer by going to Jaydigains.com. Feel free to join me while I'm live on my Twitch channel, Twitch.tv/Jaydigains. I usually go live on Tuesdays as well as other days throughout the week when I have time. Let me know in the comments below on YouTube what you do to help yourself deal with low motivation. I'd love to hear about the strategies that work for you. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care of yourself and I'll see you soon.
Sign up for updates ✉️
Sign up to get notified whenever new episodes drop. Opt in for more tips on training, fat loss, and nutrition by filling out the form below:
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Episode 46: 10 Machines to Use In the Gym
In this episode, I dive into the benefits of using resistance training machines in the gym — and why they can be a game-changer for building strength and muscle. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced lifter, machines offer stability, safety, and consistent resistance to help you train smarter and more effectively.
Welcome to The Coaching Corner Podcast with Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains!
In this episode, Jayd dives into the benefits of using resistance training machines in the gym — and why they can be a game-changer for building strength and muscle. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced lifter, machines offer stability, safety, and consistent resistance to help you train smarter and more effectively.
💡 What You’ll Learn:
Why resistance training machines are ideal for muscle building and injury prevention
How to adjust machines to fit your body for maximum comfort and effectiveness
Key machines to target each muscle group, including:
Leg Press – Build powerful legs with controlled range of motion
Hack Squat – Improve quad and glute strength
Leg Extension & Curl – Isolate the quads and hamstrings
Chest Press – Develop upper body pushing strength
Lat Pull Down – Strengthen your back and improve posture
Seated Row – Build back thickness and strength
Shoulder Press – Boost shoulder strength and stability
Pec Deck – Target chest isolation for muscle definition
Hip Abduction/Adduction – Strengthen hip stabilizers
Cable Machine – Versatility for total body training
🏋️ Pro Tip: Adjust the machine settings to fit your body and control the range of motion to maximize gains and reduce injury risk.
🔗 Resources & Links:
🎯 Tune in next week for more expert tips to help you crush your fitness goals!
Downloadable Training Plans:
-
Jayd (00:00):
Whenever you're using a cable machine, you have a lot of control over how much resistance you're giving yourself, and it's a consistent level of resistance through the entire range of motion. So if you are just trying to master the technique of the exercise, you can take the weight down pretty low, and also if you are more advanced, you can take the weight up pretty safely using this machine. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've created this podcast to help you make progress on your fitness journey regardless of whether you are trying to burn fat, build muscle, eat better, or just live a more healthy life. I've been working as a fitness instructor for over 10 years and in each episode I share some of the wisdom that I've accumulated over the time that I've spent with my clients.
(00:56)
If you would like some more information on me or any of the services that I offer, make sure to check out my website, which is Jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com. I have a membership site where I post recipes, meal plans, training plans, training tips and fat loss tips every single week. And I also go live on my Twitch channel, Twitch tv slash Jaydigains a couple times a week as well. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you some of my favorite pieces of equipment to train with in the gym to build muscle and build strength resistance training Machines are a great tool to use in the gym for a number of reasons. One is that they provide stability and safety and consistent resistance, and this is especially good for people who are just starting out in their fitness journey and aren't quite ready or feel maybe a little bit intimidated by free weights.
(01:50)
Machines are a great place to start, but they're not just for beginners because they offer that consistent resistance. This can be a really great tool for helping you to maximize your gains if you're trying to build muscle, even as an intermediate and advanced exerciser. They're a great tool for helping you to work on specific muscle groups in isolation, which can be great for rehabbing an injured part of your body, but also if you are trying to build muscle, especially if you're trying to compete on a stage, machines can be really helpful for helping you develop your physique. Before we move forward, make sure to hit that like button if you're watching me on YouTube and subscribe to the channel so that you always get notified when I drop a new video. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure that you subscribe to the podcast to always get the latest episode delivered right to your device. Without further ado, let's hop into the episode and talk about some of my favorite machines to work with in the gym.
(02:51)
So number one at the top of the list, one of my favorite machines to work with for resistance training is the leg press machine. Leg press machines come a lot of different sizes, shapes and styles. You have some leg press machines where the weight will be below you and you'll sit in a chair that moves some leg press. Machines will have a platform that moves and the chair stays stationary. My favorite variation of the leg press machine though is the one where you sit in a stationary chair on the bottom and the weight is actually above you. The platform moves and you can attach a lot of weight to this style platform because it loads just like a barbell or Olympic barbell with plates. This is a really great tool for helping you to develop leg strength. The specific muscles that are targeted with the leg press are the quadriceps or quads in the front of your thighs as well as your hamstrings in the back of your thighs and your glutes muscles in your bottom.
(03:44)
Now one of the perks of doing leg press over say a barbell squat is that it's pretty safe on your back. Some people struggle with using the barbell on their back because they have limitations and actual weight bearing exercises and how much their spine can load, so you don't necessarily have to hold all of that weight on your back while you're standing. It's generally pretty safe in comparison to balancing a barbell on your back and like I said, you can load a lot of weight onto it, so if you're in a position where it's not really feasible for you to work with a barbell for whatever reason, whether you have an injury or you're just not really keen on putting a lot of weight on your back, a leg press is a good substitute for that. The nice thing about the leg press is that you are not limited by your upper body strength and your ability to hold a certain amount of weight on your back or in your hands.
(04:38)
If you were going to do a front squat, the way that you would have to worry about if you were holding weight, whether it's dumbbells or barbells, because all of the weight is just being held by the platform itself. I also like using the leg press as an accessory for my power lifting clients on days that they do squats or deadlifts. This is a great finishing exercise to help them to squeeze out some more reps in that range of motion of the squat without necessarily having to hold the barbell. And it also puts your body in a kind of slightly different position from what it would be under the barbell while you're squatting, so it gives you a slightly different stimulus. So that is definitely number one on top of my list of favorite resistance training machines in the gym. Now number two, following closely, the leg press is the hack squat machine, and not all gyms have a hack squat machine, but if your gym does have one, I highly recommend using it.
(05:36)
The usefulness of this machine is very similar to that of the leg press. The main difference though between the leg press and the hack squat is where the weight is loaded. The hack squat usually loads the weight on your shoulders using some kind of a platform with some padding across your shoulders. You are usually also going to perform these from a standing position, but the angle is going to be quite different from the way that you would normally squat if you were holding weight in your hands or holding a barbell across your shoulders. The hack squat allows for a much deeper range of motion, which allows you to get much deeper into the quadriceps than you probably are able to do with a leg press or even doing a regular back squat. Now, if you really don't like to have weight across your shoulders and that's why you're not doing back squats, then the hack squat is probably not the best move for you, but if you want to use it as an accessory to burn out your quads and hit your squat from a different range of motion and get a slightly different stimulus, this is a really great tool.
(06:39)
Now, number three. Next up. Another favorite machine that I really love to work when it's available is the leg extension and the leg curl machine. You might actually see these two movements on the same machine and some gyms actually have them separated out into separate machines, so you have one that's leg extension, one that's leg curl. The benefit of this type of machine is that it really allows you to fully isolate the muscles in the front and the back of your thighs, namely your quadriceps and your hamstrings. So if you're really trying to build muscle there in your thighs, you cannot skip doing leg extensions and leg curls. I like using these as an accessory for my powerlifters and strength training clients, and I also of course like to use it for my clients who are really particularly focused on building muscle and getting really nice sculpted legs.
(07:28)
If you are rehabbing like you have a back injury and you're not able to fully squat, but you still want to work your legs, this is also a really good tool to use because you're not going to be putting any weight on the spine while you train your legs, unlike if you were to do a weighted exercise or the hack squat. Now moving up from the lower body to the upper body. Some of my favorite pieces of equipment to use for building strength in your arms, your chest, in your core are things like the chest press machine. I really love this machine for especially working with beginners who are not yet in a place where they have the coordination or maybe even the mobility to perform safely doing dumbbell chest presses or even the barbell bench press For these people, the chest press machine is a must have.
(08:20)
One of the things that I love about it is that it keeps a really consistent range of motion, a consistent amount of resistance, and you can really bump down the resistance as much as you need to practice the range of motion. Now, it's also really great for intermediate and advanced exercisers as well, especially if they're really trying to target and isolation their chest and their triceps. Performing with the dumbbells or the barbell with a bench requires a lot of stability work for your lower body and in your core, but if you're just trying to grow your chest, your shoulders, and your triceps, you can save a lot of the energy that would go towards your stabilizing muscles in your core and in your lower body and put all of your effort into fatiguing the chest, the shoulders, and the triceps. So it's an awesome machine for hitting the chest and isolation even for intermediate and advanced exercises.
(09:18)
Now, my number five favorite piece of gym equipment is the lat pull down machine. The lat pull down machine is a great option for exercises of all levels. One, it's great for building up your upper body strength and your back strength. Doing this exercise is also great for helping you to fix poor posture because as you're performing a pull down, you have to practice keeping your chest forward and up and pulling your shoulders down while the weight is in motion. Now, if your goal is to eventually be able to perform a pull up, the lap pull down machine is a great way for you to train towards that goal because you can modify how much resistance you're using and get it to the point where you're able to actually pull down close to the amount of your own body weight. And once you reach that point, you can start to phase into doing assisted pull-ups or non assisted pull-ups.
(10:12)
The other thing that I really like about this machine is that there are a lot of different varieties of pull downs that you can perform depending on what muscle group or movement pattern you specifically want to develop. I often have my clients practice wide grip pull downs because this helps them to develop their external rotation in their shoulders, which is something that most people struggle with, especially if you work in front of a computer all day. But if you're trying to grow your lats and grow your biceps, doing a more narrow grip pull down or a parallel grip pull down or even a reverse grip pull down is a great move for really extending the lattisimus doci muscles or the lats and getting a deep contraction there as well. Now related to the pull down machine is another favorite machine of mine, which is the seated row machine.
(11:03)
I love this machine for helping you to train your lats and also master the movement of the row. Rows are one of the fundamental foundational movement patterns to master in the gym for safe body alignment and to help keep you injury free. Many people struggle, however, if they go right to trying to perform this exercise with the weights. Using the seated cable machine is a great way for you to kind of work on mastering the form of where your elbows need to be positioned and where your shoulders need to be positioned as you perform this exercise. Pulling the weight back from a seated position is a much more intuitive way of performing this exercise, which later on will translate over to performing the exercise with weights either from standing or a bench. And of course, whenever you're using a cable machine, you have a lot of control over how much resistance you're giving yourself and it's a consistent level of resistance through the entire range of motion.
(12:04)
So if you are just trying to master the technique of the exercise, you can take the weight down pretty low, and also if you are more advanced, you can take the weight up pretty safely using this machine. Now next up, number seven. Another machine that I really like is the shoulder press machine. This machine is really great for helping you to develop the muscles in your shoulders, namely your deltoids, but also your other shoulder muscles like your external shoulder cuff, rotator muscles like the supraspinatus infraspinatus terrace, minor terrace major, and because you're also doing some elbow extension inflection, this can also hit your triceps as well. Now, the reason why I like this machine versus using dumbbells or a barbell for performing shoulder presses is that it's generally pretty safe and provides a pretty consistent range of motion. The shoulder press can be a really tricky exercise to master with the weights, especially using free weights.
(12:59)
There's a lot of movement that can happen. There's a lot of balancing and coordination that's required for doing this exercise correctly and safely using weights. But when you're using the machine, you have this consistent and stable range of motion that will allow you to learn the movement with very minimal risk of injury. It's also beneficial for intermediate and advanced exercises because it provides a consistent amount of tension through the entire range of motion, which is the main weakness of doing weighted exercises. When we're doing weighted exercises, the amount of resistance or the amount of tension that you're able to put on the muscles actually changes at different points through the range of motion of the exercise. But when you're working with a machine, it's going to give you the same level of resistance through the entire range of motion, so you're going to get maximal gains from using a machine and be able to fatigue the muscles more in order to stimulate muscle growth and strength gains.
(14:00)
Now, number eight, another machine that I really like is the pec deck or the chest fly machine. Now, if you are trying to grow your pecs, this is a must use piece of equipment in the gym. It is really hard to fully isolate the pecs muscles when you are doing an exercise like the barbell bench press because like I said before, there's so much stabilizing that has to happen using your core in your lower body and also the triceps get a lot of work and they're going to limit the amount of weight that you can actually lift when you're using a weight in the chest press exercise. But when you are using the pec deck, you're able to really isolate the PECS through the entire range of motion with this exercise. This machine also allows you to maximally stretch out the pec muscles during the eccentric phase of the exercise in a generally pretty safe way when you're using weights.
(14:57)
The amount of tension put on the muscles varies at different points in the exercise. In general, the longer the lever is that you're holding the weight out with the more tension you're going to put on the muscle. Now when it comes to doing a chest fly, if you're using weights, the weight is going to put more tension on the muscles at the very tail end of the eccentric phase of the exercise, and it's going to have more tension there than you will in the mid to last part of the concentric phase of that exercise. Now, in general, our muscles are actually weakest when they're most stretched out, and so at that point is if we're going to change up how much resistance we have, that would be the point where we probably need a little bit less and then we tend to need a little bit more tension as we get to the muscle being more contracted.
(15:50)
In general, the more contracted the muscle is, the more tension you can put on it, the more weight it can use. So this can be kind of dangerous if you are performing pec flies with the dumbbells because when you get to that last end of the eccentric phase of the exercise, if you're using too much weight, this can very quickly become too much resistance to the point where you may strain or tear your pecs or even your bicep tendon. So you can reduce your risk of injury by instead using the pec deck or the chest fly machine because you're going to be getting a consistent amount of resistance through the entire range of motion. And also when you get to the point where your arms are closing, you're going to not lose any of the resistance. You're going to be able to continue to challenge your muscles even at that tail end of the exercise.
(16:40)
So this machine is generally safer to use for flies versus using the dumbbells, and it's also going to give you more resistance, and that's not to say that the dumbbell peck flies don't have their use. I absolutely use them with my clients, but if there is APEC deck or a trust fly machine in the gym that I'm training my clients in, I'm definitely going to recommend that they use it. Number nine. Another favorite machine that I love when gyms have them, not all gyms do, but if a gym has them, I'm definitely going to be using the hip abduction slash adduction machine. Just like with the leg extension and leg curl machines, a lot of gyms will have this in the same machine. The same machine will be able to do both abduction and abduction, but some gyms also have them as separate machines. This machine allows you to train your hips specifically for the abduction where you're practicing opening your legs up from a seated position.
(17:36)
This allows you to train your gluteus medias and gluteus minimus muscles, which are very important, stabilizing muscles in your bottom. Also, if you want to build a nice butt performing abduction is absolutely essential, so this machine allows you to do that exercise with a pretty heavy amount of resistance. The ad deduction is giving you resistance on the way back in, so starting from your knees being apart in a seated position, you're going to get resistance closing your knees. Now this helps to target your adductor muscles, which are also very important, stabilizing muscles, and also very important to train if you want to develop nice sculpted thighs because the motion here for this piece of equipment is opening and closing the legs. Some gym goers will call this the good girl bad girl machine, call it whatever you want, but if it is available in your gym, I highly recommend using it.
(18:29)
And now number 10, my top piece of equipment, most favorite of them all is the cable machine or the cable crossover machine. The reason I love this piece of equipment is because you can essentially do nearly every single exercise that we've talked about today just with this one piece of equipment. So if you are building a home gym and you have it within your budget to get one of these cable machines, I super recommend it because you'll be able to do so, so much. I have a client who got a cable machine for themselves a couple of months ago, and I did the happiest of Happy Dances when he purchased it because I knew we were going to be able to do so much more exercises for his training. Now that he has this piece of equipment, if you want to do peck flies, you can do that with this piece of equipment.
(19:17)
If you want to do pull downs, you can do that with this piece of equipment, abduction, abduction. You can also do a lot of stabilizing exercises with this piece of equipment. Now, it usually comes with a bunch of different handles, so you can work your muscles in a variety of different ways, and it also allows you to adjust the point of tension from all the way up over your head to the floor, so you can give yourself a lot of variety of stimulus. Of course, just like with other machines, the thing that I love so much about the cable machine is that constant amount of tension that it provides through the entire range of motion for an exercise. There's some muscle groups that are really hard to target and train effectively just by using dumbbells or free weights like the rear dets, the cable crossover machine, and the ability to do exercises like the rear det crossover is just God gamer.
(20:09)
I love this machine so much and I am just crossing my fingers for the day that I can add one to my own personal home gym because I love it so much. Luckily, the gym that I train clients out of has several cable machines, so I get a chance to use them whenever I have an opportunity between my clients, but I definitely use it for my clients all the time. Now, let's talk about how to properly use machines in the gym for maximizing your gains and reducing your risk of injury. Before you use a piece of equipment, make sure to adjust the settings to make sure that it is right for your body. If there's a chair, look for a place where you can pull the pin out and move the chair up or down. Make sure that you adjust the pads as well. Most pieces of equipment have some kind of a pin system where you have to pull the pin out by pulling on a button and then allowing it to move, and then you stick the pin back in.
(21:02)
Just make sure though, before you actually use the piece of equipment that whatever you have adjusted is actually sturdy and settled. Give it a little jiggle before you actually sit down on the machine and use it because the last thing that you want is for it to kind of settle underneath you. Just like with any other form of resistance training, it's really important that you control the entire range of motion while you're performing an exercise. Avoid going too too fast and just kind of slinging your way through the exercises. You want to move at a controlled pace. In general, I like to recommend counting two seconds on the eccentric phase of the exercise and two seconds on the concentric phase. So if you're doing bicep curls, that would be like two seconds up, two seconds down. Now, if you are intermediate and advanced and you want to really maximize your gains, I would recommend moving at a rate of motion where you're going very, very slow on the ecentric range of the exercise.
(22:01)
So about four seconds on the extension and then pause for two seconds, and then one second on the contraction. Going slow on the eccentric phase of the exercise while the muscle is elongating is going to help to increase the time under tension for that muscle, and the eccentric phase tension is really where the muscle growth happens. Whichever speed you're going, make sure that you're moving at a nice controlled slowish pace. Also, don't hesitate to ask if you're not sure how to use a machine or if you're not sure how to adjust the settings on it. Most gym staff and normal gym goers are actually pretty friendly, especially those ones who look really intimidating. Some of the biggest guys in the gym are actually the nicest people. They're usually just kind of big teddy bears and they love to help. So if you are not sure how to adjust a piece of equipment, feel free to just ask somebody. Ask one of the staff members, especially if they're a trainer, if you see a trainer around, they'll know how to use that piece of equipment. But a lot of times the people that you see that are regulars that go there all the time, they're happy to explain or even spot you if you need a little bit of assistance while you're doing the exercise. So there you have it, 10 pieces of equipment that are really great for helping you to build muscle in the gym.
(23:24)
Now, if you are here on YouTube, make sure that you subscribe and stay subscribed because I pretty regularly post exercise tutorial videos here on my YouTube channel demonstrating how to perform different exercises, and in the coming weeks, I actually do have a lot of machine exercise tutorials that are coming your way. So stay subscribed and be on the lookout for those. And if you want a little bit more guidance, don't forget that. I also have downloadable workout plans available on my website, and several of the plans that I have up right now are actually for using in the gym with machines. There's beginner level and intermediate and advanced level programs. So make sure to check out my website, Jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com, and click on workout plans in the top menu. Also, you can sign up for one of my programs on the A BC Trainer Rise app.
(24:17)
Each program is six months long and includes a four week training program that refreshes every month. You'll get new workouts that include exercise tutorial videos so that you can learn how to perform different exercises and use different pieces of equipment in the gym. If you want to work with me directly, you can sign up for the one-on-one coaching variation of each program. To learn about this, just go to my website, Jaydigains.com or Jaydharrisonfitness.com. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can leave a comment in the comments below. You can also join me while I'm live on my Twitch channel on Tuesdays and other days throughout the week. As I have time, just go to twitch.tv/jaydigains. Thank you so much again for joining me, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show so that you always get notified when there's a new episode, new episodes drop on Mondays and Thursdays. Have a wonderful rest of your day. I will see you in the next episode. Take care.
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Episode 45: Trouble Sticking to Your Diet Plan? Try These 3 Strategies
The most common reasons people struggle to stick to their diet plans are things like perfectionism, emotional eating, and time constraints. In this episode, I share some practical tips to overcome these obstacles, including how to track your food intake effectively, planning meals ahead, and meal prepping. I also talk about ways to better manage your macronutrient intake to maximize your protein and reduce excessive carbohydrate and fat consumption.
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode, I'm sharing 3 strategies for sticking to your diet plan.
The most common reasons people struggle to stick to their diet plans are things like perfectionism, emotional eating, and time constraints. In this episode, I share some practical tips to overcome these obstacles, including:
how to track your food intake effectively
planning meals ahead
meal prepping
I also talk about ways to better manage your macronutrient intake to maximize your protein and reduce excessive carbohydrate and fat consumption.
Links:
Sponsors/Affiliate Links:
Legion Athletics Supplements: Use code Jaydigains to get 20% off for new customers - Double loyalty points for returning customers)
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Jayd (00:00):
Whenever you are tracking or if you're following a meal plan, the goal is not to have you tracking or following a meal plan and being super strict on your diet forever and ever. Usually tracking is something that I recommend my clients do when we are trying to make a change and form new habits, but eventually, eventually the goal should be to transition into a more intuitive style of eating where you are intuitively better able to follow your nutrition plan without having to track or follow a meal plan. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I am Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I'm a health coach and personal trainer and I've created this podcast so that I can share with you some of the tips and wisdom that I've gained over the last 10 years working in the fitness industry. In today's episode, we're going to talk about tips for helping you to stick to your diet plan.
(01:01)
Now, by diet plan, I don't necessarily mean that you are on a diet, meaning a fat loss diet. Diet plan is simply your plan of how you want to eat in order to support your fitness and health goals. Your diet plan could be eating a calorie deficit in order to stimulate fat loss. Your diet plan could also be eating a calorie surplus in order to maximize muscle gains. You might also be on a maintenance diet plan. Your diet plan also might have nothing to do with tracking your calories and focus instead on food groups like trying to follow the healthy plate model or following a meal plan that's created for you. Your diet plan is just simply how you plan to eat in order to reach your health and fitness goals. Now, in today's episode, we are going to be talking specifically about sticking to diet plans that are centered around calories and macronutrients.
(01:55)
Calories are the way that we measure the energy that we get from food and macros is short for macronutrients, which are the main sources of calories that we get from food, namely protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Now, maybe you've gone through the process of figuring out how many calories and what your macronutrient distribution is supposed to be for you to reach your health goals, but what I often find is that many of my clients, especially when they're just in the beginning of their nutrition plan process, they struggle to stick to their diet plan. So today we're going to talk about ways that you can go about sticking to your diet plan so that you actually reach your goals. And before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video if you're watching it on YouTube and subscribe to the channel so that you always get notified when I drop a new video.
(02:46)
If you are listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you subscribe to the channel so that you also get notified whenever there's a new episode. If you would like more information on me or the services that I offer, check out my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N-S.com. I've got workout plans, meal plans, and other downloadable resources that you can use to move along in your fitness journey. If you would like more help, you can join my Gains Club membership, which has exclusive content that I post every single week to help you to eat better, exercise more effectively, and achieve your fat loss goals. Every month I post meal plans, recipes, nutrition tips, fat loss tips and training tips. So check out that you can sign up right from my website, Jaydigains.com. Now without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(03:44)
Now, let's talk about why it is often so difficult for people to consistently reach their calorie and macronutrient goals every day. One problem that a lot of people experience is perfectionism. You have this idea or this expectation that you have to hit your calories and your macronutrient goals exactly just so every single day. Now, this is not only unrealistic, but it's also unnecessary. You do not have to hit your calorie goal 100% perfect to the decimal every single day. In order to make gains and make progress toward your fitness goal and your nutrition goal, instead of having this perfectionist mindset, you want to have a mindset that over the course of a week you want your calorie intake or your macronutrient intake to on average be about the level of calories and macronutrients that are in your goal for your nutrition plan. So say, if your goal is to eat 2000 calories a day, and that's your calorie goal, you might one day eat 2100 calories and then the next day eat 1900 calories and bounce between these two numbers.
(04:59)
Well, by the end of seven days, your average number of calories will be roughly 2000 calories. So roughly you will have reached your goal every day, and this is fine. You do not have to stick directly to the number just on average. You want to reach about the number of calories and the number of grams that are in your goal. And related to perfectionism, I know a lot of people also have this all or nothing mindset, which if you really want to make progress in your fitness, your fat loss, your muscle gains, you have got to work on this mindset because this mindset is going to hold you back. This is the number one reason why people wash out of my training program or they completely just never reach their goals. If you have an all or nothing mindset that says, if I can't do everything all at once perfectly, then I'm going to do nothing that is toxic and that's going to hold you back.
(05:56)
I would rather you abandoner perfectionism, abandon the expectation of all or nothing, and then just do some of what you need to do, right? If you can hit roughly your calorie goals or your macronutrient goals on most days, right? That is enough. Think of the 80 20 rule. If 80% of the time you're roughly doing what's on your plan, then 20% of the time you can afford to fuck around the 20% of the time you can afford to eat over your calorie goal or eat foods that are not necessarily within your plan. Your body is going to reflect what you do most of the time. So if most of the time you're generally more or less reaching your goals, then that's fine, but also remember that we are organic creatures that are stuck in our habits. A lot of times it takes time for us to adopt new habits, and so if you have this all or nothing mindset towards your diet or towards your fitness, you're going to really struggle to implement all of the things all at once that you need to do to reach your ultimate physique goals or your ultimate fitness goal.
(07:06)
You have to be okay with just working on one little thing at a time and allowing your progress in implementing that one little thing to be imperfect, right? Imperfect action is better than no action at all. Okay? So let's ditch the all or nothing mindset and adopt instead a growth mindset which says, I just want to do a little bit more than what I was doing yesterday. I'm going to try to do a little bit better today than I did yesterday. 1% better every single day means that one year from now, you'll be 365% better than you are today, okay? So it's enough to just make small changes. You do not have to do all at once, and you also don't have to be perfect. Now, another reason why people tend to struggle in sticking to their diet plan is that their eating is very, very tied to their emotional state and their mental state.
(08:08)
Eating is not just something that we do for fuel and energy and nutrition. Eating is also an emotional thing. It's a social thing. It's integrated into many different aspects of our lives. But one of the most common disordered relationships with food is using food as a way to dissociate from unpleasant, anxious, or uncomfortable feelings that we might be having using food as an escape the same way that someone might use drugs or playing too many video games or doom scrolling on social media. If you're using food to dissociate, to disconnect from how you're feeling or as an escape from how you're feeling, that is not a healthy relationship with food. And for that reason, I would suggest that you work with a coach or a dietician or a therapist to address that relationship and that way that you're using food for emotional regulation. You want to develop other strategies for emotional regulation that don't involve you eating.
(09:15)
Sometimes it's okay to eat comfort foods. I eat comfort foods from time to time, and that's totally within my nutrition plan. I have it structured that way. But if you have an uncontrollable impulse and to regulate yourself primarily through eating, that's a problem. And so you want to work with a therapist. You want to work with a dietician to develop other strategies to help yourself to regulate your nervous system. When you're dysregulated, that doesn't involve food because until you address that, until you work on that, you are going to continue to sabotage your nutrition plan. You're going to continue to break your diet and not follow your plan because your brain's automatic systems are always going to override whatever it is that you have set out to do in the moment when you're just regulated. That is when whatever is automatic for you is going to be strongest.
(10:12)
Your instinctual drives are going to be much stronger. So if you instinctually habitually automatically reach for food to regulate your nervous system, when you're dysregulated, meaning you're anxious, you're upset, you're worried, you're sad, if you primarily use food to regulate yourself and get back to a calm state where you feel safe, where you feel calm, where you feel steady, then you are more likely to continue doing that automatically, and it's going to be very hard for you to break that habit unless you replace food with other regulation techniques. So I would recommend seeing a therapist. I would recommend seeing a dietician or working with a coach so that you can develop those other strategies to regulate your nervous system so that you're not automatically reaching for food to regulate yourself. Now, another reason why people struggle to stick to their diet plan is time constraints.
(11:05)
We are all so busy and we spend the majority of our waking time rushing from place to place, going to work to our hobbies or maybe shuttling kids around to their school and afterschool activities, and then to the grocery store, and then all of these errands. It's really hard for us to make time for food the way that we need to. We find ourselves reaching for convenience foods or ordering takeout from restaurants. We tend to also go for what's more salty or sugary versus what's actually nutritious for us because we're all crunched for time. So now let's take a look at what different strategies you can use to deal with these very common difficulties with following your nutrition plan. Number one is to track your food. It's so hard to make sure that you are actually eating according to your calorie goal every day or your macronutrient goal every day if you're not actually tracking what you eat.
(12:08)
So track what you eat using a calorie tracking app like MyFitnessPal or some other type of macronutrient tracking app to actually track what you eat, keep an eye on how many total calories and grams of protein, grams of fat, grams of carbohydrates you're eating every day. Now, there was a study a couple years ago that showed with a group of people who were trying to lose weight. They had a control group of people who didn't track what they eat, and then they had another group of people that kept a daily journal or diary of what they ate, and they weren't even really tracking calories at this point. They were just writing down what they were eating. And on the whole, they found that the group that actually wrote down what they were eating and kept track of what they were eating every day lost more weight than the group that didn't track what they were eating every day.
(13:01)
So even if you're not actually tracking your calories, just maintaining some awareness of what you're eating and being mindful and reflecting on what you're putting on your plate and just making sure you're noticing it is huge for helping you to stick to your diet plan. And the reason this works is because we are so busy, because we have so many demands on our time and on our energy and our attention, it's very easy to go an entire day eating, and then at the end of the day, you have no idea what you've eaten, no memory of it at all, or maybe you've forgotten a lot of stuff, or maybe you ate something and you weren't even aware of what you were eating. You were just grabbing something so that you could keep going. This happens to all of us. It happens to me all the time, and that's normal.
(13:49)
So if you find that that's more often the case for yourself, then starting to track what you eat may be very helpful for you to just develop some mindfulness. But then if you find that your mindfulness is only going to take you so far, you track what you eat and you're consistently missing the mark where you're not able to actually stick to your calorie goal or your protein goal or your other macros, in that case, you want to be a little bit more intentional about your tracking. In that case, I would recommend don't track just as you go, just eat something and then just track it. Instead, what I recommend is track what you are going to eat, what you're planning to eat first, plug it into MyFitnessPal or your food journal, then see what the calorie number is, see what the macronutrient distribution is, and then you can make a decision on whether you're going to eat it or not, or you can make a decision on whether you need to maybe reduce your portion or change the portion or maybe substitute that with something else.
(14:52)
So start to practice not only just tracking what you eat, but track intentionally before you eat the thing. That way you have time to actually make adjustments. I had a client a couple of years ago who was consistently just not reaching his goals, and I asked him more about it, how he was tracking when he was tracking, and I found out that he was really just plugging everything in at the end of the day after he had already eaten everything. And I said, my dude, what good is that? Do you really think that that's going to help you to make better choices? And he's like, well, no, I guess not. I keep just doing the same thing and I just see the number every day. I'm like, yeah, exactly. Plug it in before you eat it. Then make adjustments. That's how you'll reach your goal.
(15:41)
And this is a very common mistake that a lot of people make. They think, oh, I'll just plug it all in at the end of the day, or I'll just plug it in after the fact. That's really not going to help you to actually make any changes. And that's the whole point of tracking, right? Especially if you're trying to make a change to your diet. If you're trying to change how you're eating, then be more effective with it and tracking. Become aware of what it is that you're eating before you eat it. Now, personally, I don't love tracking my food. I find it to be tedious. I also really don't like to have to think about what I'm going to eat every day throughout the day. I am the type of person that is very, very busy. I don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about what am I going to eat, and then sitting down with my meal planning app and running the math, I don't have the executive functioning to spare on my day-to-day life in my day-to-day life to be able to do that.
(16:40)
So what I do instead, and what I encourage a lot of my clients to do instead is plan out what you're going to eat ahead of time. You can plan out what you're going to eat at the beginning of the day and just plug it into your app or write it down in your fitness journal. You're going to have this for breakfast, this for lunch, this for dinner, and these are going to be your snacks. Make adjustments as needed to make sure that everything you plan on eating that day fits within your calorie goals or fits within your macro goals. So that's one way to approach it. My way that I typically approach it though is I like to plan a couple of days to an entire week ahead of time. I don't mind repeating a meal. In fact, I really like to repeat a meal.
(17:18)
So what I often will do is eat the same thing for four days and then I'll change it up and I'll eat a different thing for four days, and that way I only have to calculate out the calories and the macronutrients for each day. One time, maybe two times per week. Planning and pre logging your meals before you eat them can help you to stick to your plan. Now, you can stay even more ahead of the game to help you to stick even better to your plan is to go ahead and actually prepare the food that you have planned and pre-GED. This is called meal prep. Meal prep is the practice of preparing your food ahead of when you're going to eat it, either at the beginning of the day or at the beginning of the week or every couple of days. This is my number one strategy that I have found very, very helpful for myself because again, I don't like to spend a lot of time on a day-to-day basis thinking about what am I going to eat?
(18:16)
My preferred way to stick to my nutrition plan is to just grab something out of the refrigerator that I've already cooked and pop it in the microwave to heat it up or pop it in the oven or eat it cold. Okay? I don't want to have to think about it. I've already created these meals, I've already plugged them into my nutrition plan app, and I already know how many calories it is. All I have to do is eat it, right? So that makes it very easy for me to stick to my nutrition plan because I don't have to think about it as much. Other people who really like to cook and who want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen preparing stuff, that's fine. I love that for them. It's just not right for me, and I found that I struggle with sticking to my diet plan when I don't prep ahead.
(19:02)
So prepping ahead is a really great way to ensure that you're sticking to your plan, and in fact, even further is to batch cook. My favorite thing to do is I will make something that is four to six, sometimes even eight servings of an entire meal. So I'll cook all of it at once, cook it all up ahead of time, and then I'll divide it out into separate entree containers like those restaurant to-go containers. This past year I started using the glass containers. I really like those because they don't absorb the smell or the taste of the food, so that's my favorite. You also can cook the meals directly in the glass Pyrex containers, so that's another way that I make it super, super easy for myself. Now, in addition to this, I also take it even further in terms of my planning ahead. I don't want to sit down at the beginning of every single week and calculate out what I'm going to eat and make sure that it fits within my calorie goals and whatnot.
(20:02)
Instead, I actually eat a standing rotation of a couple of weeks of meal plans, and they go for about six weeks, and every six weeks I'm repeating a meal plan. So in one week, one of my lunches slash dinners will be a Turkey stir fry with green beans, and then the other meal prep, batch cook meal that I'll have is Turkey pot pie or chicken pot pie. And then the week after that, I'll do for lunches and dinners as eating, cooking it all ahead of time for four to six days, alternating between lunch and dinner, I'll do shepherd's pie, and then some kind of a pasta casserole, and every six weeks, I just start over with the same plan. Now, this makes it very easy for me because all I have to do is flip to like, oh, I guess we're at week one again.
(21:00)
Let me go back to week one and see what my recipes are, make sure that I have everything that I need in my kitchen or just go to the grocery store. That also saves me time because it keeps my grocery list pretty consistent every six weeks. Now, if this is interesting to you, I do have some meal plans, some four week meal plans that you can download as examples from my website. If you go to my website, Jaydigains.com, J-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N-S.com, and you click on meal plans in the top menu, you'll be able to take a look at some of the four week meal plans that I've created. I've got one for high protein, 2000 calorie diet, a vegetarian diet, as well as a 1500 calorie diet, and you can check all of those out on my website and give them a download, give them a try.
(21:44)
These are four week meal plans that you could just alternate every four weeks, every month restart, and then you can swap out recipes for new recipes that you want to fit in. It's a really easy way to stick to your nutrition plan. Now, I do find that protein is the hardest macronutrient for most people to hit the goal of every day. It really does take some planning to make sure that you're eating enough protein every day. For most people, and this is true for people who are vegetarian and vegan diets, as well as omnivore diets, okay? So you do kind of have to be mindful and plan for eating enough protein, and one way that you can do this is anytime you go to eat something, just look it up in your meal tracking app or look up the nutritional info online or look at the food label and just give a quick check to what the protein content is of that food.
(22:44)
Because in order to reach the protein goals that you need in order to build muscle effectively and burn fat, it is kind of high, right? A lot of us have pretty high protein goals, and it's hard to hit those goals unless you're planning for it and being very, very mindful. This is especially true when it comes to snacking, okay? Snacks are where a lot of people miss the opportunity to hit their protein goal for the day, because a lot of times when people reach for snacks, what do they reach for? Chips, cookies, crackers, which are basically carbohydrates. You get enough carbohydrates in other foods that you eat most often, so instead of reaching for a bag of chips or some cookies or crackers, instead, try to fill your refrigerator up or pack your lunch with some snacks that are high protein instead. Okay? Snacks that are high protein are things like Greek yogurt, non-fat or low fat Greek yogurt.
(23:41)
Also, protein shakes are a good snack alternative. You could also do egg whites, make some egg whites for yourself or mix them with whole eggs. Cottage cheese with honey or fruit is another good option, and then some lean meats like Turkey chicken and lean beef. A lot of my clients will snack on deli meat, which is a great source of protein. It's pretty satiating, and especially if you tend to crave salty things like salty snacks, like crackers, the deli meat is going to satisfy that itch while also giving you some protein. Now, if you find yourself struggling in overshooting either your carbohydrates or your fats grams every day, which are very, very common problems that people find with following their nutrition plan, here are a few recommendations when it comes to your carbohydrates. Very, very frequently if you order something from a restaurant or even maybe this is how you cook in your own kitchen, it's very common to have your meal be a ton of carbohydrates like pasta or rice or bread making up the majority or half or more of what is actually the meal, right?
(25:00)
So you kind of have to change how you think about the structure of your meals to not include so much of these high carb foods. Remember, if you're following the healthy plate model, your grains and starches, which are your pasta, rice, bread, et cetera, should really only make up about a quarter of your plate or your bowl if you're having a bowl food, and then most of the meal should be vegetables or vegetables and fruit and protein. But what you see in a lot of restaurants and a lot of cuisine is that they will actually put half of the plate is one of the grains, so that will cause you to overshoot your carbohydrates more often than not, and so you want to make sure that you are following the healthy plate model when it comes to what types of foods or what food groups you're putting on your plate, and in how much.
(25:51)
If you're overshooting your fats, often, there are a few things that you need to be mindful of and maybe start practicing when it comes to your day-to-day, what you put on your plate and what you eat for your snacks. If you're eating high fat meats like sausage, you might want to swap those out for leaner cuts of meat, okay? If you're cooking your meat like ground beef or ground Turkey, an easy way to reduce the fat is to actually drain out the fat into a bowl or a cup after you've cooked everything. Let that cool and then throw that away rather than leaving it in there. I know what many of you're probably saying is that takes away the flavor. It may be taking away some of the flavor from the food, but it will reduce the fat intake and allow you to stick better, stick closer to your calorie and macronutrient goals.
(26:40)
You can put flavor back in through using sauces and spices and mixing the meat with other things, okay? If you are consistently overshooting your fats, then sometimes you got to make those sacrifices. You also will probably want to reduce the amount of oils that you're using. If you use butter to cook things, you might want to use a spritz spray. If you tend to just dump oil in the pan, then again, switching to a spritz and then using a non-stick cooking surface is a great way to reduce the amount of fat that you're taking in. Remember that fat is a very calorie dense macronutrient. One gram of fat is nine calories versus one gram of protein, or one gram of carbohydrates being only four calories. Okay? So it's something that you want to be mindful of how much you're consuming. These are great ways that you can reduce the amount of fat that you're taking in.
(27:35)
Now, I want you to keep in mind that whenever you are tracking or if you're following a meal plan, the goal is not to have you tracking or following a meal plan and being super strict on your diet forever and ever. Usually, tracking is something that I recommend my clients do when we are trying to make a change and form new habits, but eventually, eventually the goal should be to transition into a more intuitive style of eating where you are intuitively better able to follow your nutrition plan without having to track or follow a meal plan. Okay? You want to get to the point where it's settled as a habit following the healthy plate model, and it settled as a habit. You just kind of intuitively know after so much practice of tracking what the calorie intake and what the macronutrient distribution is of the foods that you tend to eat on the regular, once you become more familiar and more practiced with the stuff, eventually you can reach a point where you sort of take your foot off the pedal with the tracking and you can be a little bit more flexible.
(28:40)
This is the place that you want to be. Okay? So I know that tracking can be really boring and tedious, and change is hard. It's stressful on the system, that's for sure, and that's probably another reason why you struggle with it, but give it a good go and one thing at a time. You don't have to change everything at once. Instead, think about one to three things that you can change at a time when it comes to trying to eat according to a new diet. Plan one thing at a time until those things become habits, and then add in another thing, okay? The goal is always to build these things into your life, to the point where you do them intuitively and automatically, okay? That is what's going to allow you to have sustainable success in following your nutrition plan and reaching your fitness goals.
(29:35)
So there you have it. Those are my suggestions for if you are struggling to follow your nutrition, please let me know what you think, and if there's anything that I missed, maybe there's something that you're already doing that has been helpful for you, or maybe there's something that you've struggled with with following your nutrition plan that I haven't mentioned. I would love to hear from you. Leave those things in the comments below. If you're watching this video on YouTube, or you can join me while I'm live on my Twitch channel on Tuesdays and on other days throughout the week, just go to Twitch tv slash Jaydigains and give me a follow or subscribe to support the channel. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, aka Jaydigains. Check out my website, Jaydigains.com if you would like to know more about me and the services that I offer. That's it for today's show. I hope that you enjoyed it and that you found it helpful, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 44: Fix Back Pain With These 5 Types of Exercises
In this episode, I'm sharing 5 ways to alleviate back pain by strengthening your core and improving your posture. Poor posture and weak core muscles can lead to common injuries such as disc problems and muscle strains, especially as you get older. But you can reduce the risk of these things by doing core-strengthening exercises like: spinal stability, spinal flexion & extension, thoracic rotation, and hip extension & glute-strengthening exercises. In addition to exercising the muscles around your spine, it's also important to be aware of your posture throughout the day. Maintaining an active lifestyle can also improve your core strength and posture.
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast.
In this episode, I'm sharing 5 ways to alleviate back pain by strengthening your core and improving your posture. Poor posture and weak core muscles can lead to common injuries such as disc problems and muscle strains, especially as you get older. But you can reduce the risk of these things by doing core-strengthening exercises like:
Spinal stability (planks, bird dogs, dead bugs, & balance training)
Spinal flexion & extension (cat-cows, crunches, supermans)
Thoracic rotation (t-spine rotation, woodchops, twist crunches)
Hip extension & glute-strengthening exercises (bridges, kickbacks, hip thrusts)
In addition to exercising the muscles around your spine, it's also important to be aware of your posture throughout the day. Maintaining an active lifestyle can also improve your core strength and posture. For more detailed workout plans and exercise tutorials, check out my website jaydigains.com, and my YouTube channel.
Links:
Sponsors/Affiliate Links:
Legion Athletics Supplements: Use code Jaydigains to get 20% off for new customers - Double loyalty points for returning customers)
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Jayd (00:00):
It does take time and practice to fix your posture and put yourself in better alignment, but it is so well worth the work continuing to stand or sit with poor posture, especially if you're putting your spine under load by carrying weights can put you at risk of an injured disc or some kind of a muscle or soft tissue strain. These are all super common injuries, especially for people as they get older. So if you have poor posture, now is the time to start working on it. You can improve it, but it takes practice and it takes deliberate exercise.
(00:42)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've created this podcast to share some of the tips and wisdom that I've picked up through my 10 years as a fitness coach and personal trainer. In today's episode, we're talking all about how to improve your core strength and improve your posture. Now, this is one of the most important things and one of the first things that you should work on when you are at the beginning of your fitness journey. But even for intermediate and advanced exercises, it's incredibly important to continue to emphasize working on your core strength and improving your posture as you get stronger and fitter. Now, before we get into the episode, make sure to head over to my website jaydigains.com or Jayd harrison fitness.com and sign up for my email list there. You'll get notified anytime there's a new podcast episode, and I'll also send you notifications whenever I post new posts to the Gains Club membership site. You can sign up for the Gains Club membership site right from my website where you'll get exclusive training tips, nutrition tips, recipes, meal plans and training programs, and I update this every single month. Just go to jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N-S.com, and without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:57)
Maintaining a strong core and good posture is one of the most important and foundational aspects of having a well-rounded physique and a good level of strength. It's essential to maintain strength in the muscles in your torso to keep a healthy back and reduce your risk of injury, as well as your risk of developing chronic pain in your back, neck and shoulders. Weakness or tightness in any of these areas can cause discomfort, tension, chronic pain, and can increase your risk of injury. How many people do you know who throw their backs out as they get older? Just doing simple activities like reaching down to the floor to pick something up when they've dropped it? I know people who have thrown their backs out just by putting their pants on in the morning. It's a very common injury and it often is the result of having a weak core or weak back muscles and poor posture and alignment.
(02:52)
It's also a factor of not having good solid movement patterns and ability to hip pinch and properly safely pick up from the floor. It's also not uncommon for people to injure their backs while exercising. This is especially true for people who are really focused on adding more weight to the bar for their back squats or for their deadlifts, and they keep adding more weight past the point that their core and their upper body strength can really handle and maintain a nice rigid torso. Now, back injuries are no joke. They can put you out of commission for a long period of time. Slipped discs, pulled muscles in the back or misalignments of your spine are all major injuries that affect almost everything that you do every day. Having a healthy back is something that a lot of people kind of take for granted until they get injured.
(03:43)
Now, it is one of the most common ways to get injured, but it is also very preventable. You can greatly reduce your risk of hurting your back by maintaining a strong core like your abdominals, your obliques, your erector spina, and your transverse abdominis, as well as your upper back muscles like your lats, your traps, and your external shoulder rotator muscles. Developing those muscles will allow you to maintain your spine in alignment while you're moving or picking something up from the floor or doing some kind of heavy exercise like loaded squats or deadlifts. So today I'm going to give you a few tips and recommendations for exercises that you can do to strengthen your core and improve your posture. Before we get into the practical tips and exercises that you can do to improve your posture, let's talk about what good posture is. Good posture is the ability to stand with your shoulders right over your hips and your spine.
(04:36)
Maintaining a natural neutral curve, your hip tilt should be neutral, not anterior or posterior. The way that you can tell the difference between a posterior and anterior pelvic tilt is to think of your hips as a bowl of water. For an anterior pelvic tilt, you would be tipping the water out forward in front of you. So for an anterior pelvic tilt, you usually will see someone who looks like they're sticking their butt out. I having a DHD and hypermobility often stand like this. It's a very common way to stand for people with a DHD, so it's something that I have to pay particular attention to because standing like this and lifting like this can lead to lower back strain and also slipped discs. So what we want to practice is a neutral pelvic tilt where the water isn't spilling out forward or back. The posterior pelvic til is probably what you experience when you're sitting at your computer for work where the water would be spilling out behind you and your hips are kind of coming forward.
(05:35)
What we want to see is that neutral pelvic tilt where the water wouldn't be spilling out at all. Now, a great way for you to kind of tell where your pelvic tilt is naturally in your posture is to take video of you standing at the side facing profile and then practice exaggerating, tilting your hips forward and back, thinking of that water splashing back behind you or splashing forward, and you want to do that enough to the point where you feel like holding onto your hips, you're able to get the water level, and once the water is level, then that tells you that you're at a neutral pelvic tilt. Now, if you normally spend most of your time in an anterior pelvic tilt or a posterior pelvic tilt, this might actually feel like you are exaggerating, tilting your hips the other way. It takes time and practice to get your hips to a neutral pelvic tilt most of the time, but it is something that you'll need to be mindful of.
(06:37)
So for assessing your posture, whether it's your pelvic tilt that you're looking at or the alignment of your spine, or whether your shoulders are rounded forward and back, I recommend taking video or picture of you standing from a profile side so that you can see the side of your body. Now, while we want the hips to be right underneath the shoulders, the shoulders themselves should be back and down, and your arm should be at a slight external rotation in the shoulders. Standing like this may feel very unnatural to you if you spend a lot of time with your shoulders rounded forward, your hips tilted and your spine rounded forward or back. It does take time and practice to fix your posture and put yourself in better alignment, but it is so well worth the work continuing to stand or sit with poor posture, especially if you're putting your spine under load by carrying weights, can put you at risk of an injured disc or some kind of a muscle or soft tissue strain.
(07:36)
These are all super common injuries, especially for people as they get older. So if you have poor posture, now is the time to start working on it. You can improve it, but it takes practice and it takes deliberate exercise. So now let's take a look at some of the exercises that you can do to improve your posture and improve your core strength to reduce your risk of injury and chronic pain. Now, the first kind of exercise that you should do to help improve your core strength and your posture is to practice what are called core stability exercises. These are exercises where you're challenged to hold your spine and your torso in alignment in that anatomical stance or in that good posture while your muscles are working under load. So a good example of this would be planks either center planks or side planks where you're holding your body up in a position either on your hands or elbows and then on your toes or on your knees.
(08:27)
The challenge here is to keep your spine in alignment by pressing actively away from the floor and not sinking into your shoulders, and also keeping your hips from sinking down or coming up too much. I recommend holding these positions for anywhere between 15 and 60 seconds. You can do these as part of your priming exercises, the beginning or warmup of your workout, or you can integrate them into other parts of the workout. Another favorite exercise for core stability for me and my clients is the bird dog. The bird dog can be done either as a hold for an extended period of time, like 15 to 30 seconds, or you can also do it for reps for the bird dog. You begin in an all force position and practice alternating lifting your opposite arm and opposite leg in a straight line from your hand through your hips to your foot.
(09:14)
While you're holding this position, the goal is to keep your shoulders and your hips level with the floor. So you'll have to really engage your transverse ados, your abdominals, your erector spina, as well as the muscles in your hips and in your shoulders. Now you can hold this position for 30 seconds or more and then switch to the other side and hold it, or you can practice alternating side to side about two seconds up and two seconds down to each side. I usually recommend my clients do somewhere between eight and 15 reps to both sides. Another favorite exercise for core stability that I have my clients do is called the dead bug. This exercise is a great way to strengthen your abdominals in the front of your torso. This exercise is basically the opposite of the bird dog. It's the same movement, a range of motion.
(09:58)
It's just that you're facing up on the floor with your back on the floor, your hands and your knees up towards the ceiling. From this position, you'll alternate dropping your opposite side leg and opposite side arm to form a straight line before switching to the other side. Now, if it's too much for you to have your leg straight dropping down, you can also perform a modified version of this exercise by keeping your knees bent and just tapping your toes to the floor when you drop your leg. So if you experience any back pain while doing this exercise, know that this is a modification that you can use now for both the bird dog and the dead bug. If you want to take these exercises up a notch, you can add additional resistance by holding some lightweights in your hand. I usually recommend starting with the lightest weight that you have on hand, which could be a three pound, five pound dumbbell on both sides.
(10:46)
Keep it light here because a little bit goes a long way. You can also add a resistance band around your feet to give a little bit more resistance to the legs as you perform this exercise. And the challenge for both of these exercises, the bird dog and the dead bug, is to keep your spine in alignment while your legs and arms are moving. You can use this to develop core stability. I also like to use these exercises for my intermediate and advanced exercises at the beginning of their workouts to help fire up their core so that they can brace better during the heavier or more challenging exercises later in the workout. Now, it's also important to practice developing your spinal mobility, which help to strengthen the muscles in your torso and also improve your flexibility in the different types of movements of the spine. Our spines are incredibly flexible and they have a lot of different movement patterns.
(11:33)
Flexion and extension is the ability of the spine to arch forward and back. Exercises that practice This are things like the cat cow stretch sequence where you're on all fours on the floor and you practice tucking your chin, tucking your hips, and rounding your spine up like a cat. Alternating that with arching your back the other way where you drop your belly button down towards the mat or the floor, lift your eyes and lift your hips. Alternating between spinal flexion and extension is a great way to strengthen your abdominals as well as the erector spin a muscles in your back. It also helps to loosen up tight muscles in your torso that may be limiting your mobility or causing chronic pain. Thoracic rotation is also another really important movement pattern to practice. This will strengthen your obliques in your latus doci muscles as well as your trapezius muscles in your upper back.
(12:23)
Having good thoracic rotation will help to improve your posture, especially in your upper back. It'll also allow you to more safely perform exercises like rows, chest presses, and deadlifts. A great exercise to improve your thoracic rotation include things like what I call the quaded T-spine rotation, where you start on all fours, bring your fingertips to your temples with your elbow bent, and then practice exhaling as you twist to bring your elbow up towards the ceiling. The goal here is to try to stack your shoulders and twist as much as possible, and then inhale to return back to your starting position. I usually recommend that my clients do somewhere between eight and 12 repetitions per side here. Other good exercises for thoracic rotation include seated wood shops using a band or a cable machine, but you can also do just simple seated rotations. Flexion extension and rotation are the key movement patterns to practice for improving your core strength and for improving your posture.
(13:20)
That's why I include a lot of these types of exercises in my beginner level programs when I'm trying to build up core strength for my clients, but I also include them at the beginning of the workout for my intermediate and advanced clients to help them to improve and maintain their spinal strength and mobility. Now, if you tend to have a tight lower back, it likely is due to having poor posture like we talked about before, having a posterior pelvic tilt or an anterior pelvic tilt when you're sitting or standing can often lead to tightness and strain in the lower back. So ways that you can relieve this pain and also practice putting your body in good alignment are things like the pelvic tilts that I talked about before. I actually recommend my clients do pelvic tilts at the beginning of their workouts as part of their priming and warmup, especially if they tend to have problems with lower back pain.
(14:11)
This helps them to not only loosen up tight muscles in their lower back, but it also helps them to become more aware of their pelvic tilt so that when they're doing their heavier exercises later on, they are more likely to be able to control their pelvic tilt and reduce their likelihood of getting injured or straining their backs. The cat cow stretch on all fours is a great way to loosen up the tightness in your lower back if you have lower back pain. But you can also do a standing or laying on the floor knee to chest stretch, which can help loosen up your hip flexors and lower back child's pose is one of the best exercises for loosening up the back if your knees and your ankle mobility allow. Now, in addition to strengthening your core muscles, it's also important to strengthen your glutes. The gluteus maximus muscles are responsible for hip extension, which is in part how you hold your body upright.
(15:07)
So if you have a tendency to struggle in holding your body upright, if you have that forward rounded posture, strengthening your glutes through exercises like bridges, squats, deadlifts, step ups, are all great ways for you to strengthen your glutes and improve your posture over time to take your core stability up a notch, it's really important to also practice balance training exercises, balance training exercises, force your body's muscles to engage, to help keep your body stationary while you're standing on one leg or if you are in some kind of other balancing position. So for this reason, I really like to include balance training exercises during the first block of every program that I write for my clients, and it's also a really important type of exercise for my beginner level programs. Good examples of balance training exercises are literally just standing on one leg. I usually progress my clients from a level one balance where their weight is on one leg and they have their toes of the other leg on the ground, level two, where they practice lifting the toes up just to get comfortable with standing on one leg, and then level three, where they actually lift the knee up high to further challenge their balance.
(16:16)
So just standing in an unstable stance also can help to develop your core stability. Good examples of these would be things like the staggered stance or standing in a high lunge position while you perform some other exercise with weights for your arms. All of these help to reinforce the engagement of your core muscles, their ability to keep your body stationary and in good alignment to improve your posture. So for these reasons, I include these types of exercises in every single beginner level program that I write for my clients, and I also include them in a lot of my intermediate and advanced exercise programs to help reinforce a strong core and solid posture for my clients. Now, keep in mind that I do have a lot of downloadable programs on my website. You can go to jaydigains.com and click on workout plans in the top menu.
(17:05)
Each of these plans includes a guide for how to do the workouts and exercise tutorial videos for each exercise where I demonstrate how to perform the exercise. You can see a lot of my exercise tutorial videos on my YouTube channel as well where I post every week a handful of exercises that you can use to improve your strength or mobility. Many of the exercise tutorial videos that I create though are exclusive to my training programs. You can also sign up for one of my six month programs that are delivered through the A BC Trainer Rise app. This is the app that I use to manage my personal training clients and to deliver ongoing programming for people who subscribe. You can find information for that on my website as well by clicking on training app in the top menu. Now, here are a few more tips for improving your core strength and your posture.
(17:50)
One is try to become more aware of your posture throughout the day. If you have a tendency to round yourself forward while you're working at your computer or standing around, become more aware of how you're standing and start to practice correcting yourself and putting your body back into proper alignment. Whenever you notice that you are rounding forward or that your pelvic tilt is forward or back, just practice resetting your body. The more that you practice resetting your body, the easier it'll be for you to do this without even thinking about it. At the same time, you want to also do this while you're exercising. When you're exercising, always be thinking about how you are holding your body. Are you standing with good alignment? This is another great way to help reinforce the movement pattern of holding yourself with good posture, and it will also further strengthen the muscles that hold your body up in good posture.
(18:43)
Another thing to keep in mind is that the more you sit and the more that you are stationary, the more likely it is that your posture and your core strength will decline. So try to get into the habit of moving regularly, which is good for so many other reasons. In addition to helping your posture, you can set a timer on your phone or on your watch to get you up and moving every hour or every two hours, or you can set for yourself a daily steps goal. Do something that encourages you and reminds you to get up and moving because the more you move, the stronger you will be and the better your posture will be.
(19:21)
Thank you so much for watching. If you are on YouTube or listening to this podcast, don't forget to subscribe to my channel or to follow the podcast wherever you are so that you get notified anytime I drop a new episode. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, aka Jaydigains, and I'm so happy to have had you here. I hope that you found this information helpful, and I look forward to hearing from you. Reach out and let me know what you think of the podcast. You can leave a comment in the video comments below if you're watching on YouTube, or you can come and join me live while I'm live on my Twitch channel, Twitch tv slash JD Gaines on Tuesdays and on other days throughout the week. As I have time, I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day, wherever you are, and that you're taking good care of yourself. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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Episode 43: How to Strengthen Your Grip for Heavier Deadlifts
In my over 10 years as a fitness coach, I’ve found that grip strength is the number one limiting factor for many exercisers in doing deadlifts. I’ve found a lot of success, however, by having my clients practice a variety of pulling and hanging exercises, which I discuss in the episode.
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode, we’re talking about how to strengthen your grip to lift heavier weights.
In my over 10 years as a fitness coach, I’ve found that grip strength is the number one limiting factor for many exercisers in doing deadlifts. I’ve found a lot of success, however, by having my clients practice a variety of pulling and hanging exercises, which I discuss in the episode.
This discussion in this episode was recorded while I was live on my Twitch channel for my weekly fitness stream. Make sure to follow or subscribe to me at Twitch.tv/jaydigains so you can participate in future discussions!
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Jayd (00:00):
If you want to do power lifting, if you want to compete, if you want to get really, really strong, you do want to work on your grip strength and train to the point where you can hold the amount of weight that your legs can push. So what I do with my clients is I on a deadlift day or a back day or a poll day, and sometimes I have 'em. It depends on how bad their grip strength is. I might have them do these types of exercises every day, that specifically target developing grip strength. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've created this podcast so that I can share the tips and wisdom that I've gained over the last 10 years working as a personal trainer and fitness coach. In today's episode, I'm going to share one of the discussions that I had with a chatter on my Twitch channel.
(00:58)
This chatter was asking me about how to perform the hook grip, which is a style of grip for deadlifts, and this grew into a larger discussion on how to strengthen your grip strength. Now, grip strength is, in my experience, one of the main limiting factors for most exercisers when it comes to performing deadlifts and being able to lift as much weight as their legs can handle. So in this episode, I give some tips and exercises that I recommend and I use for my clients to help them to develop their grip strength so that they can lift bigger weights. Before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel. If you're watching on YouTube, this will allow you to get notified anytime I drop a new video. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure that you follow the channel so that you also get notified anytime there's a new episode and it gets delivered right to your device. If you would like more information about me and the services that I offer, you can head to my website. That's jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N-S.com. Check out my membership where I offer exclusive training tips, nutrition tips, recipes, meal plans and training programs with new content added every month. You can sign up right from my website and without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:19)
I know it's not back poll day, but I'm wondering if you can show how to do a proper hook grip. Just learning over here, if you don't mind. I don't think I am the best person to demonstrate a proper hook grip because I do not lift with a hook grip. You know, who could actually teach you how to do a hook grip would be Ben Rice and he streams pretty frequently. He is a much, much better source. I don't think I could really demonstrate it so well because I don't like it. I don't do it and I probably don't do it. Well, I can't stand it when I deadlift. I do a mixed grip. I do over under when I'm doing heavy. If I'm just muscle building and I'm not doing heavy, I just use straps. I tried in the past and I was like, fuck that.
(03:05)
No, never, never, never. No. Why do I want to squish my thumb? Why? I couldn't even tell you what the benefits are. People say it helps them to retain better grip on the bar. That's not my experience though. Even with mixed grips, your deadlifts are really struggling and it's not the back. Is it your grip strength then for certain? Because if it's your grip strength, it's always a good idea to work on your grip strength no matter what, regardless of what grip you use on deadlift. Grip strength is the number one limiting factor for most people that I train when it comes to working their deadlifts up. I'd say grip strength and core strength. So it's usually overall it's the upper body that is the limiting factor for most people's deadlifts, whether that's not having the core strength to be able to keep your torso rigid while you are bearing a lot of weight, or it's the actual strength of the arms and being able to hold the amount of weight that your legs need to get the stimulus that they need to grow and get stronger.
(04:14)
So if you do struggle with the bars just rolling open, right? There's a couple of things that you can do. Hook grip is not one of the things that I suggest because I hate it personally, but I'm also like I don't use it myself. So I couldn't really give a whole lot of guidance on that. But basically it's just embrace the pain is kind of the answer. Also, because I'm very small, I am a five three duet, so I am not a dude. I don't have really big hands. So that probably has to do with why hook grip is especially terrible for me. If I was using a girl bar like the little 35 pound Bella bars, I might be able to do it more comfortably. But with an Olympic barbell, it's just a pain city. But if you want to do power lifting, if you want to compete, if you want to get really, really strong, you do want to work on your grip strength and train to the point where you can hold the amount of weight that your legs can push.
(05:19)
So what I do with my clients is on a deadlift day or a back day or a pull day, and sometimes I have 'em, it depends on how bad their grip strength is. I might have them do these types of exercises every day that specifically target developing grip strength. So to develop grip strength, you can do exercises where basically you're just holding weight at your sides. Farmer carries are like the perfect example of this. I like to actually warm my clients up with farmer carries. What else are they called? They're called farmer carries. Farmer walks. They have a couple of different names, but essentially what you're doing is you're holding at your sides and you're maintaining a tall posture as you walk. You're just walking while holding weights, a grocery carry, if you will. And the challenge is to just keep holding the weights as long as you can or whatever interval of time.
(06:14)
With my clients, I'll usually give them a distance point, like walk with this weight to that point, turn around and come back. Or you can set a timer and say, I'm going to walk continuously with this weight for 45 seconds to a minute or more. You could warm up with that or you could add that as an accessory on other training days. Other carrying exercises would be things like Romanian deadlifts or rose, sorry, not rose. Well, yeah, rose actually too. But lunges like reverse lunges, forward lunges, walking lunges, those are other exercises where you're just basically holding the weights at your side for extra resistance. Of course, like rows actually doing rows, standing rows or rows with the dumbbells. Another really great way to train up your grip strength and just your upper body strength and your back strength. A lot of kettlebell exercises are awesome for developing grip strength and coordination.
(07:13)
So kettlebell swings and kettlebell swing variations are all really good for developing your grip strength. Hanging just dead hangs, dead hangs. If you have a pull-up bar or a TRX strap where basically you're doing any kind of a hanging exercise can help you with your grip strength as well. If you have access to an assisted pullup machine, that's also helpful. But you can also use super bands to help you as in an assisted pullup. So any kind of hanging or pulling up exercises aren't pulling exercises in general. The thing is, if you had to be careful how much you fatigue your grip before you actually do your deadlift sets, specifically if you're trying to lift as much as you can in your deadlifts. So I would say do what you need to do just to warm up. Warm up intensity. Do as many of your deadlift sets as you can without any aid if you have a lot of sets.
(08:07)
My program right now is based on the JU juggernaut training systems program, so I have a lot of sets. I have 10 sets of deadlifts that I have to do on my deadlift day, so I do as many of my sets as I can with no straps. But then for my amra set, my last set, I'll just go ahead and use straps for that. So that's another approach that you can do is just do as many of your deadlift sets and reps as you can with no aid and then finish your workout with straps just so that your legs can get the stimulus they need without your hands limiting them. And then as accessories, after you've done all of your deadlifts or on a separate day when you're recovered, do all of these other types of grip training exercises and do it to fatigue, do it to muscle failure where you can't hold the weight any longer.
(08:56)
And over time, that will get your grip strength up to the point where you can handle more weight before your grip fails with your deadlifts, you would end each workout with a farmer's walk distance until I can't hold the weight, but the other day I did, so almost three days later my forms are still struggling though I hear they're supposed to recover quicker the first time you do it or whenever you progress the exercise, you're going to have soreness. You are going to have that delayed onset muscle soreness. It's always going to be worse whenever you add something new or you do something for the first time, it should get better over time, but some people are always sore. Don't get me wrong, some people are always sore no matter what, but it should get better over time. But anytime you add something new, just know that you're going to probably have some delayed onset muscle soreness with that, especially the assist for the last set.
(09:48)
Yeah, I mean, honestly, how many days a week are you working out? If you're working out like four days a week, just do some grip strength exercises in every single workout, even if it's not a pull day, and that can gradually bring your strength up over time, but it is going to take a while. Don't get me wrong, especially considering how much your legs might need in terms of weight to get challenged, it may take a long time for your grip strength to be there. This is especially the case for my female clients. A lot of my female clients are very, very strong in their lower bodies when they first start working with me and forever. Women just generally have more muscle, more percentage of their muscle is focused on the lower body just by nature versus the upper body. And so it just takes a really long time to catch the upper body up to the point where you can hold what you need to hold for your legs to get challenged.
(10:41)
So you want to play. It's a delicate balance between doing what you need to do, lifting only what you can actually carry so that you catch your grip strength up and balancing that out with using AIDS so that you can get the stimulus that your muscles need in order to actually get stronger and grow. But yeah, that's what I do with my clients. That's kind of my approach to it. Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you have any questions or comments, make sure to leave them in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube. Also note that you can join me while I'm live on my Twitch channel. Just make sure to give me a follow on Twitch. That's Twitch.tv/jaydigains. Follow the channel so you get notified when I go live and you can join me and ask questions or share your progress. I love to hear from you guys. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure you prioritize your self-care, drink some water, eat some veggies, eat some protein, and I will see you soon.
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