Episode #372: 3 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Workout

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main episode:

Hey there beautiful people. Welcome to today’s episode of the Healthy Moms podcast. Thank you so much for being here. And I am pumped to hop into it with you today. I hope you’re feeling pumped and energized in this new year and feeling that fresh month momentum. I do want to remind you before I happen and we are going to hop right in, I promise to the three tips to getting the most out of your workout and get you seeing results super fast. I do just want to remind you that we have a couple programs kicking off this month. So you can go back and listen to a I have a December episode about each individual offering. You can also just go to my website healthy Catholic bombs. But there is a sense of urgency here because our fat loss program kicks off January 15. And to keep it simple, my early bird pricing for not our fat loss challenge for our monthly workout group and January 15. So that second, the first one is the eight week fat loss program. That’s great for beginners, if you’ve never worked with me, even if you’re not looking for fat loss, I will teach you all the basics of strength training, of tracking your macros, I set you up with full video workouts you check in with me every other week looking at your food logs, the whole shebang. So even if you’re not looking for fat loss, it just helps you to eat the right balance of carbs fat and protein for your body. And it’s like very, very hands on. I only read it three times a year. So that is the eighth week and we start January 15. So I’m trying to close it January 8. Again, it’ll just close once 20 spots are full, it has closed the last several times we’ve run it so the chasing greatness group is the monthly workout group that you are welcome to happen to any month of the year for a monthly subscription fee. But I’m offering a discounted price for one year paid in full. And that’s what goes away January 15. All right. Deep breaths still recording these pregnant. So still shorter breath. Thanks for bearing with. All right, now let’s hop into three tips to get the most out of your workout. And also for those programs. Like I said, just do the website is easiest way to do it, you could use the link in my Instagram bio to all that good stuff. So alright, getting the most out of your workouts. I’ve talked about this in a couple past podcast episodes. So if you’re interested, you could go back and listen to those ones. So some of those things I left off of this little list here, there are things that I consider Givens that I might have talked about in other episodes like having a plan. That’s a huge time saver, and a definite way to make sure you’re getting the most out of your workout. When you are just randomly picking exercises, doing random YouTube videos every other day always doing different ones. That’s a huge thing. I see. I know it’s fun. I know it keeps it fresh. That can be something that’s like, helps in the motivation department. But that’s a big downfall. Even with group fitness classes, I taught group fitness forever. And I was the first to acknowledge like, this is a downfall of group fitness to just be walking into a random class that you have. A lot of times no idea what’s coming or, you know, you do the workout once and then two days later, it’s totally different to using different weights doing different reps. It’s very hard to progress that way. That’s the downside. So if you’re like well, Bernie like it’s fun, it’s exciting. I get it. I know that I agree. But usually progress lies in seeing progression in the workouts. So what that means is, if you do one, say you do one workout one YouTube video, I have a bunch of free YouTube videos, or maybe somebody else you love, maybe Beachbody, maybe whatever, but you do that video. And then you do that same video the next Monday, but try to get more weight or more reps, or something that shows progression. That’s how you’re gonna see changes in your body. This is truly like when I went from, I don’t know how much body fat percentage, I started out when I first started lifting. But it was definitely high somewhere. Probably close to 30, I would guess. And then I got down to like just below 20 was my lowest. And I usually have around 21 to 22 to give you just a frame of reference here. After each kid I’ve hovered around between like 21 and 22. I’ve not gotten below 20. Again, since my wedding because I haven’t really tried to 21 ish is where I like to live. But anyways, for that change to happen for that fat loss to happen. For my body to change in like its actual composition to start seeing lean toned muscle I had to that was when I started lifting and I got a workout journal, and I wrote down what I was doing. And then I did it for four weeks. And most personal trainers, or coaches or whatever, who are worth their salt, let’s just say who know what’s going on who use evidence in scientific and research based approaches. Most you’re gonna see it’s you’re doing the same workouts for at least three to four weeks on a three to four week cycle. And there’s people who, you know, are way higher level than I am who also support this. So I feel validated in my approach. And in my beliefs when like Dr. John roussin is a great example he’s on Instagram.
I think Dr. Jill Seaman is as well. But Dr. John Morrison I know has made specific posts about the need to follow a program for more than just a week. So this is a bonus tip. I just want to throw that out there. Before we even dive into these nitty gritty tips. The best thing you can do is know what the heck you’re doing walking in, stay with it, and progress it now. Yes, if you do my programs, that’s exactly how we do it. And I know it’s not the most exciting thing I get that. I’ve heard from many a client, even if it’s one on one, guys, that’s what I do. I do not because I care more about getting you results than about pacifying what you think is cool and fun. If you want to go jump around and do burpees on a BOSU ball and hitch, kick, jump up, tuck jump, whatever, that’s cool, you do that. If you want results, and you want to protect your joints, and you want to have good muscle mass and be a healthy body fat, I’m going to do it the way that I know works. And I know is really good for your body, good for your joints, all that stuff. Okay. All right now, the adding on to that my three tips today are number one, automate your warmup and cooldown. This kind of goes along with not just mixing up your workout every single time I do pretty much the same warm up. Every single time it gets very, there might be minut variances, especially in the chasing greenness group, sometimes I will use the foam roller or sometimes I won’t. Pretty much every workout whether it’s upper or lower is going to start with activating the core and the muscles around the spine. So that might look like bird dogs. There’s when I was called spine openers that I love dead bugs, glute bridges, those kinds of things, because you’d have to activate the front and back of the core. And then depending on if it’s an upper body day or a lower body day, or a full body day, I’m going to prime just those muscles we’re going to use for the workout. So it should be two to five minutes. That’s what I do in the videos. Keep it real short and sweet. But you do need to do something, you can’t just hop right into the workout. So it’s really helpful to just have your couple exercises lined up ready to go that you know, you just dive into right away. And then same thing with a cooldown. I only stretch the muscles that I worked in that session. So I don’t do a full body stretch. That would be a great luxury that I would love to do. But like all of you, most of you, we want streamlined, we want kind of like in out as quick as we can because we’re on to other things. We’re doing it at naptime. We’re doing it early morning, you know. So in the interest of doing that, I just added my workout. If it’s if it’s not ending with a cardio component, like if we’re not ending on hit, you don’t have to worry about your heart rate coming down usually. So I just go right into stretching the muscles I worked. If you’re coming off of hit or cardio or something you do need to let the heart rate come down naturally so that might look like walking around a little bit marching in place, etc as part of your cooldown before you stretch. Okay, Number two, if you’re trying to get the most ideal workout, like squeeze every ounce of work time into the time you’re allotting for your workout, this is kind of like a maximize your time tip, you should use super sets, and, and or active recovery in your workouts. So what this looks like is super sets, you will see a ton in all my programs, because it is a great way to still build muscle still burn fat, but not have to have so much rest time. There’s a little bit of nuance here that I don’t want to get too far into today. But essentially, like circuits are great too. And I do use circuits, sometimes circuits have a place. But it’s hard to build muscle with circuits. Usually circuits is more maintaining because it’s a quicker pace, you don’t get a break until a circuit is doing one exercise after the other and resting at the end of it. So say there’s five exercises, you do all of them back to back, you rest, then you do that again, however many times your body’s tired, you’re a little bit out of breath as you’re going so you’re not able to do your full weights, which is not going to make you necessarily stronger, it’s going to usually maintain what you have going on, it’s just a different way of working out, can be really good for cardio endurance, for working that kind of aerobic capacity work in your lung capacity, it totally is a place that’s what we’re doing for the November workouts and chasing greenness was focusing more on that. But like I said, if you’re trying to really change your body composition, grow muscle burning fat, it’s better to go with supersets or straight sets. So supersets is doing two exercises back to back, and then resting. Now, especially if you are trying to grow muscle or gain muscle get stronger, whatever you could do this very easily with using like two opposing muscle groups. So even though you’re working like two sets in a row, what you just worked gets to take a break. So for example, if you were doing an upper body day of supersets, and you do like bench row, superset with chest fly, that was a back exercise and a chest exercise their opposite muscle groups. So it’s not like you’re fatiguing the same muscle first, if you did like banded lat pole, which is back in a bent row, that would be tough to superset if you’re trying to progress or do something at your strongest, because those are both back exercises. Does that make sense? Hopefully, I know I’m talking to you. You can’t tell me back right now. But hopefully, I always used to say, I haven’t said it in a while in here when I taught middle school nod and smile at Mrs. Pearson. So I like to look for that understanding. But supersets are great because it’s that kind of best of both worlds. So another option just want to say this is not active recovery yet, but what straight sets are straight sets is doing. Say it says three sets of 10 goblet squats, you would do 10 goblet squats then you would rest one to three minutes, then you do it again. Do that again, then move on to the next exercises, you need to do straight sets when you are trying to work at your optimal strength or like lift the most weight you can trying to get as strong as you can, you need a lot of rest time for that. So if like one of your goals for 2024 is to be able to do bodyweight pull ups. You can’t be like super setting that or doing active recovery with that you need to give it time there’s like no way around that. Again, speaking from someone who does this and is probably gonna be in this boat again, I don’t know if even in 2024 My core will be ready for pull ups again or if I’ll have to wait till 2025 For those of you who are newer here I am due December 3. So depending on when the baby came and all that jazz, I don’t know. But I do wait on like those kinds of really heavy core bodyweight exercises until my core is totally top notch again, which might take till a year. But if and when I do so I’ve done this done that dance three times of getting pulled back I have successfully gotten back after each child. But this is exact there’s no way around it every time and I like be mown it to my husband like ah just take so much longer to do my workout if I do it. So some days, that’s literally just my workout then if that’s a goal of mine, and I just think it’s fun. I think it’s cool to be able to lift your own bodyweight. So I will just okay, well, Thursdays, I’m just going to do four sets of like three pull ups, or two pull ups or however many I can do. And I have to wait like three minutes between. So that’s what I know. I’m just putting the bullet bar in the doorway. I’m going to do a couple pull ups. I’m gonna go switch laundry. I’m gonna walk like go do something come back. Do my pull ups like I will fill that last time. But that is straight set. to say no. So straight sets are, you know, great for building muscle. But they’re not great for quote unquote, getting the most out of your workout because you need a lot of rest time. So unless you’re looking for building that, like absolute maximum strength, you can go ahead and utilize what I’m talking about today’s super sets the back to back option, where you’re doing two exercises back to back. And then active recovery, active recovery looks like maybe putting a 32nd hit exercise with a 32nd plank exercise. So rather than making it total rest, you are making it active rest time or active recovery. So we do this a lot too in the JC reduce group, because again, most of us like to just maximize that time. So might look like 30 seconds of jumping jacks, and then 30 seconds of like plank knee drops, you’re holding a plank on your forearms, bend your knees to the floor and coming back up. So that’s a great way to maximize time. Like I said, with the caveat of unless you’re going for maximal strength, then you just can’t do that. All right. All right. Last tip is to push to almost your max weight into almost your maximum in in your cardio threshold. So
this is just I mean, very essential to getting the most out of your workouts. I think there’s a lot of us. And I was like this when I started. So I’m speaking from my own experience, who I just wanted to check the box of getting my workout done. It was like workout for the day check. So whether I was just cruising This is truly how I started when I first started going to the gym, and I don’t know, 14 or 15. I would just grab like People Magazine, which I thought was great, because I was not allowed to read that kind of trash at home. I don’t read that kind of trash anymore. No offense to those of you who do. But I you know, whatever. I was like a kid in the candy store like, Oh, good. My mom’s not here. And I can read people. But I would go on the elliptical for like 20 minutes just cruising along. I was never winded, I could have carried on a conversation the entire time. I’m fairly certain. But then I wouldn’t be like, Yeah, I worked out awesome. And then behaviorally, I would eat more that day or eat dessert or do something because hey, I worked out today or hey, whatever is like a badge of honor. I think a lot of us live there and are stuck there of like, well I worked out today. Well, what was your workout girl? Like truly? Like I’m talking to you as a friend here. What do you do? Was it hard? Did you work like in cardio, you should be able to like you should feel like there’s obviously different approaches for different reasons, you might be going for a steady state run, like it fits your running plan that that day is supposed to be a moderate day I get that. But if you’re going to do hit hit means high intensity intervals, it means you should not be able to talk during your interval interval. And you should probably not be able to talk for a couple of seconds after while you’re catching your breath. If you’re doing 30 seconds on 30 seconds off, you should mean that 30 seconds off to like breathe heavily and take some deep breaths like suck wind and then get back into it. Truly, that’s what it should look like. Now weight wise, I don’t care what you’re using. I don’t care if it’s a band. If it is bodyweight, like that’s hard enough, like think about push ups and things like that. So I’m gonna just say, oh, bodyweight no push ups are very difficult. So strength wise, you should not feel at the end of a set like oh, yeah, cool flopping the weights around, like I could do five more of those, you should feel like wow, I can maybe get like two more. That’s what I advise with one on one clients. In my eight week program, and in my chasing greetings to all of it. The only time I say not to do this is when you are freshly postpartum, and you’re easing back in or when you’re pregnant, I don’t advise going right to almost your maximum. Other times go to almost your maximum. And there’s still like a sliding scale for pregnancy. So I’m going to caveat that too. I don’t tell you to push to almost your maximum on your core. But there’s nothing wrong with pushing to almost failure on like a bicep curl or something like that. So I hope that makes sense. And truly is a wake up call for some of you who might be stuck in the like, Oh, I think I might just be kind of checking it off. There are many ladies who I’ve written plans for I know this is this is such a limitation of us being distance wherever you are listening to this. And some of you are in my neck of the woods and some of you are not. But there have been a couple of people who I’ve worked with where you know, we were online clients and whatnot. And then we were able to meet and do a workout together at some point to check in. This is obviously only better with my very local people. I was like you know what, let’s just get together and let me see what you’re doing because and them almost like keeling over from the same workout they’ve been doing the last two, three weeks on their own. And a lot of times without even upping like the weight or reps or anything. It was just the way they were doing it the way They were utilizing their muscles. So you can have a trainer in the room with you at all times. But you need to try to uptake and apply these cues. Like, that’s why I’m taking the time to explain this to you is like, oh, I need to feel like at the end of the set, I’m within two or three reps. So you have to pretend like I am there being like, can you do five more, because you got to go up next time. You know, that is that is a luxury being in person. I used to do that in my some of my group fitness classes that I would walk around and just kind of hand somebody if they were flying around five or 10 pounds on a bicep curl, I would just put fifteens in front of them and be like, give these a shot next set, you know, then they’d be surprised that wow, I actually could lift that. You know, because it’s very hard to make ourselves go up. And I’m not always wait, wait, wait. I’m just saying you can apply this to anything. Like I said, cardio. There are people who I’ve seen be like, well, I worked out today and I’m thinking like that looked like a warmup at best. Truly, truly. I mean, make it worth your time. That’s what we’re talking about today. If you’re doing it make it effective. All right, ladies, you know, tough love here. Always tough love. But love is the most important part a little bit tough, but it’s love. All right, next episode, we’re going to talk about how to raise the bar for yourself and 2024. So probably a lot more me ranting. No, we’re definitely going to dive into people that people and things that I get inspired by, and how I try to kind of like level up, set higher goals for myself, that kind of thing, because I think it’s very easy to just, you know, stay where we’re comfortable. So I’m going to talk about that next time. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Go check out some of the programs if you’re interested. I would love to work with you this coming year. Make sure I’m giving you a kick in the butt that you might need. Alright, I’ll talk to you next time. Have you enjoy your day.

Summary: