You Should Train Women Differently Than Men, and Here’s Why
Paden
Men and women are not created equally, especially when it comes to working out. And as much as we want. Women want to believe we can train the same way as men. It’s just not a realistic thing to believe because physiologically we have some major differences. We experienced so many different things than men, not just from our menstrual cycles, but in things that happen to us as we go through hormonal fluctuations through pregnancy and through menopause, etc. And in this episode, today, we’re breaking down with Kaleena, who is our female training guru, we’re going to break down for you and with you, as trainer to trainer, what are the things you need to look out for with training women? Why women are different than men? Not just why? Because we get that but specifically how and then what are the specific knowledge gaps that you may have that are holding you back from really transforming the lives of the women that you train already and the women you’re going to train in the future? So if you are curious about how do you handle urinary incontinence with with your female athletes, if you’re curious about what’s going on in pregnancy or postpartum if you’re curious about what happens when you’re training more senior women V, this is the episode for you. And you are not going to want to miss this because Kaleena dives in, we have a really candid conversation about training women, it goes into a lot of different facets. But this is for you, because we want to help you unlock your ability to transform the lives of the women that you train, and build raving fans and loyalty when you do so.
Michael Hughes
Welcome to the Gymnazo podcast where you get to peek behind the curtains of what it takes to create and run a seven figure fitness facility that ranks in the top 5% of boutique fitness studios for revenue. But to be honest, that’s the least important thing about us. Founded by me, Michael Hughes. Schumann also has created an ecosystem of services that blend performance with restoration techniques, and attracts top coaches to its facility hosted by toners Paden and myself and our top coaches, this podcast shares our best practices on everything from how to build a sustainable fitness business, to how to program for maximum results to how to build a hybrid training module that’s online and in person. We have marketing secrets, movement, innovation, and breaking down trends in the industry. If you’re a fitness professional, or a fitness business owner, this is where you learn how to sharpen your skills and to see maximum results.
Kaleena
Hi, I’m Kaleena. I am a senior movement specialist at Gymnazo, along with a pelvic core exercise specialist, super excited to be here today to talk about how I specialized in female movement and female core training and pelvic floor training. It’s been kind of my passionate niche for the last three years helping women who are pregnant who are postpartum who are menopausal girls, who are athletes kind of just find themselves and train successfully in being women, not just athletes in general. So super excited talking about that today.
Paden
And I’m Paden Hughes, I’m the CEO here at Gymnazo, as well. And I’m joining this conversation because for almost four years ago, well, maybe three and a half years ago, I was in tears in my kitchen with Michael because I felt like I might look like I had shed all this baby wait for my firstborn, but I didn’t feel like I had gotten my body back. And none of the training that we were doing felt like it was really meeting that need. And I was really emotional about it. And so that was the catalyst that kind of spiraled this whole learning curve that as a whole as a team led by Kaleena we’ve been really diving into what is going on with training women, and are there specific times in a woman’s life where you need to be very specialized and targeted and and what’s really going on for women that’s different from men, because so often we kind of forget that there’s some pretty big differences between the two genders.
Kaleena
Yeah. Traditional training has been more geared towards men. I wouldn’t say that it’s exclusive of women, but it’s certainly it hasn’t been targeted specifically towards women. And we know that biomechanically. And physiologically, we’re totally different creatures. And we go through so many more like life stages, I call menopause, puberty, 2.0 for women, because it’s like, you know, we go through puberty, and then we go through a child, or some women do, you know, labor and delivery and then there’s menopause. And we go through so many hormone fluctuations and so many like body changes that is so different from men. How do we train differently? That’s something that’s never really addressed. It’s been Just like here, this is what you go with. This is what we know this is how dudes have trained forever because, you know, traditionally exercise started with men like bodybuilding. And then like rolled into Jane Fonda, it rolled into Pilates and then Zumba. Then all of a sudden now it’s cool for women to weightlifting exercise, but we haven’t geared more towards them. So like Paden said, being patient zero for our the female core conversion program that I designed was to help women who were having all of these dysfunctions, prior posts, labor and delivery that were new to them. And we’re seeing what’s going on like, and how can we train differently because what we’re doing now isn’t working for the current woman.
Paden
Yeah, so let’s dive into. I’m so tempted to just dive right in and just say, let’s talk about all the embarrassing shit that women have to deal with as symptoms. Because if you’re a trainer listening to this, regardless, if you’re a personal trainer, a group trainer, a movement specialist massages, whatever it is like that you geek out on you’re likely serving women, and you’re going to need to know some of the stuff that embarrasses them that they might not be willing to share with you. And I’m going to start off by saying, if you have observed the color of pants that women wear in most exercise communities. I guess I’ll throw this out there to the listeners. Would you say that women most often wear black and navy blue pants, orange shorts? Or do they go more color crazy. And my judgment on that slash pay attention? Because I think you’ll find it’s it’s true and predictable is that as women age, as they have children, they start wearing black pants for the simple reason that they don’t want you to see their pee stains as they’re jumping and running around the facilities. And so that’s just one of the symptoms is urinary incontinence.
Kaleena
Yeah, 50% of women actually deal with incontinence at some point in their lifetime, which is crazy. And you don’t even have to have kids to have to leak. I mean, I’ve had friends who have laugh and pee, and they just think that it’s normal. There’s so much that we’re not taught in school, like even going through puberty, you just think it’s a normal part of growing up even like being an athlete, and you get hit super hard. And all of a sudden you peed your pants. And that’s just like normal for you, or you think that’s normal or running and paying yourself. Like they just think that that’s normal growing up, and then it trickles into adulthood. And so you see black pants, or my favorite is we’ll be doing like a jumping jack exercise. Two minutes into class. And then women are to all of a sudden sprinting to the bathroom like, oh, I have to pee, like you just peed when you got here. Which is like a telltale sign that they either they think they have to go or they’ve leaked themselves and they need to go like adjust or clean themselves up. But gosh, yeah, incontinence is a crazy one that we just aren’t taught enough about. And it really doesn’t have, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with pelvic floor strength, which is another big misconception. Gosh, we could do a whole talk. Yeah,
Paden
we’re gonna do an entire episode with Lena diving into specifically the pelvic floor and core neuromuscular system. So we’ll mention that in today’s topic, but we’re really just talking to preimage. All trainers wanting to understand, you know, are we missing something with women, because for years in gymnastics history, we weren’t specifically targeting women. And we were realizing some of this stuff like women, talking to the female coaches, like being more willing to go to a female coach and be like, by the way, like, I can’t really do jumping jacks, or I don’t really like to do Bob jumps, can you? And it’s sort of this moment of trust, where it’s like, can you just graciously give me an alternative way to do this. So I don’t look like I suck as an athlete. But I need you to like know, the girl code of Don’t give me that and expect me to do that in front of others.
Kaleena
Yeah. So like, that’s a great that was something that I desperately didn’t understand. When I joined Gymnazo was having women confide in you and saying, they don’t want to do something, but they don’t tell you why. Like, I don’t want to do jumping jacks, but they don’t tell you why they don’t tell you that they’ve peed themselves completely. They just say I can’t do it. Say oh, why can’t you do and they just say I just can’t doesn’t necessarily like some women. They wouldn’t say like, foot pain. It’s not knee pain. They’re just like, I just can’t do it. And that was
Paden
whenever it’s baby, you should be aware that whenever it’s vague, you should be aware that that maybe there’s more going on and it’s embarrassing.
Kaleena
Yeah, totally. I mean, there’s there’s so much we could talk about the pcns But you know, as far as traditional strength training has gone like to the biggest things that the main difference between women and men is for physiological, biological, you know, we go through Through hormone fluctuations every month, there’s actually certain times in the month when it’s more beneficial for us to train, because you’re more prepared for it, or when our bodies don’t feel good, like, you know, the PMs stage, you’re not gonna feel good. It’s not it’s not necessarily we’re not in our prime to actually train while we’re menstruating or the week before that we’re menstruating. You know, that can make a difference in how you train that way. You know, biomechanically, we have wider hips and a shower set pelvis, then guys, and a lot of trainers are under the assumption that the knee can’t buckle in the kneecap. valgus. We hear that all the time. Like don’t let it but don’t let it buckle that’s so bad. Keep your knees straight over your toes. Well, for women, especially because we’re wider set, we’re actually more naturally inclined to have our knees buckling or valgus. But it’s not necessarily don’t have that ever happened or don’t train women to they never do that. It’s can you train to get it in and out of those zones safely and control like, you can’t control if it’s like that knees flying next door, then yeah, we want to we want to adjust how we train that. But, you know, training women to actually be able to go into that position and get out of it is critical for especially as we age, and not falling and breaking your hip and not hurting your knees. But I mean, we can talk about like, even starting with youth athletes. Yeah. So financially, we both grew up soccer players.
Paden
Yeah, one on one a little more success.
Kaleena
I went on to play division one at Cal Poly and great experience. And, you know, after joining Gymnazo, and I, I was injured pretty at least once a year, you know, I rolled my ankles, tore ligaments and tore both my MCL as I watched plenty of teammates tear their labrum tear their ACLs. Luckily, you know, I was able to avoid an ACL tear. But looking at how three dimensional training influences athletes is a whole nother awesome conversation we can have when we talk about training women, and training women to avoid injury, if you didn’t know teenage girls are 80% more likely to tear their ACL than boys. Wow. And it’s not because we’re like the weaker genders doing what in high school, I was a lot bigger of half the dudes on the cross country team and the boys soccer team. And they didn’t see half the number of ACL tears that we did, but because of again, going through puberty and these hormone fluctuations, like for labor and delivery, right before even you ovulate, or men straight in for labor and delivery, we release hormones to relax our tissues. And to have less tension in our bodies. The same thing happens for teenage girls, except at the teenage age, you’re even more fragile. And if you don’t have a good and solid stability program, if your points emotions, like you play a three dimensional sport. Yeah, you’re much, much more likely to tear your ACL and go that way. And that is like a firm belief and why we train 3d. But how do you train a teenage girl to you know, we call it injury prevention, but you can’t truly prevent all injuries, or prove that you did gel. But you can certainly prep their bodies to be stronger through the action that tears an ACL. So if we talk about, like the biomechanics of how you tear your ACL, it’s like knee extension, internal rotation, and then a reduction. So it’s like, like you’re snapping your knee inwards, so you tear it. So like we’re talking about that valgus that bending in of the knee? Can you start training that at the high school age, to go safely in and out of that motion? You know, on a single leg squat? Yes, you can, you can do that so many different ways. And if you again, like another fun fact, most ACL tears or noncontact, I watched to my best friends literally plant their foot and go to turn around. And that’s how they snapped or ACL. And it wasn’t in you know, my best friend that they’re playing at UCLA, we used to call her the wolf beast, because she was just an ox on the field. She was super strong and like there was no there was no way as like she was a weak player in any way shape, or form. It was noncontact it’s a mobility and stability issue just just snaps when you don’t when you don’t train that and I grew up in a very traditional train high school like deadlifts, squats, nothing was singular nothing was Single Leg nothing was multi planar and it’s a very structured very safe that you know, we say it’s safe, it is safe, but it’s not. It’s not realistic to what we go through
Paden
in our wasn’t designed to be successful in real time. In a game where you’re reacting so fast, your body needs to know how to move in the direction Exactly. hibbott, etc.
Kaleena
Yeah, that’s part of the the great thing that I love seeing now is seeing reaction training for athletes. Because that’s more realistic to what the game is having to rapidly change direction or do something like that. That’s a better prep that’s more realistic. They just have to incorporate that into their strength training program. But you know, for girl I mean, I’ve worked with women ill who have said yeah, my daughter pees herself and she 16 And she is a high school cross country runner. I’m like, why is this happening? Yeah, it should have been just so she knows. It’s not normal.
Paden
Yeah. What’s the what’s the phrase? Just because it’s common doesn’t make it normal. Yeah. I love that. Because it’s so true. It’s like we normalized stuff. Because it’s so common place. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. That doesn’t mean it’s not a red flag. And so going back real quick, you had talked about how there’s various hormonal seasons in a woman’s life, where we have I believe it’s relaxing. Is that correct?
Kaleena
Yep. And for breastfeeding, we really relaxing. That’s just
Paden
breastfeeding. But what about what were you saying? And we’ll check on that. I know, so what so but there’s a lot of hormones in play. And these create more elasticity,
Kaleena
elasticity elasticity, just less tension through the tissues, right? Because if you think about labor delivery, like you don’t want to be tense, you want you want, you want everything to be easy peasy. And to have less resistance, right? That’s the last resistance. So for one who’s not pregnant, essentially, you have four cycles, you have the menstrual cycle, your follicular ovulation, the luteal phases, I should say. And do those different phases, we see elevation and drops and estrogen and progesterone. And so that kind of messes with our ability to control our emotions. And just that tension throughout the body, like why we feel so weak or why we feel so strong certain days. Gosh, I mean, I remember moreso growing up, like when in puberty, where there’s just like days, you just you have no energy, and you can’t explain why even actually, sort of really exciting for our listeners, I’m actually an hour 15 weeks pregnant, which we just announced a few weeks ago. But first trimester just like chronic fatigue. I mean, it was just like having narcolepsy. So I felt like Mr. Bean and rat race, like where I would just be up one minute, and then down the next. And when I didn’t know that I was pregnant, I was like, What is going on? Yeah, and it was just, you know, I didn’t have energy to train. And it wasn’t I work out four to five days a week, typically. And I work out hard, like, I love exercising, and that just wasn’t going to happen. And when we take that mindset, you know, as a personal trainer, or group trainer, when you’re training female athletes, like you have to understand that they’re gonna go through the same thing that you go through, or how you can explain that to a woman who goes, Why am I not hitting my PR every week? You know, why am I not necessarily feeling this? Well, it had could have everything to do with what they’re eating, because eating affects our hormones. And then again, the phase of their menstrual cycle totally affects their hormones. Yeah, so there’s this whole, you know, misconception that we can work at 100% all of the time, when really, internally, you might not have any idea what’s going on. And so if you’re, you know, if you’re training women, I’ve I started using a fitness tracker, I use whoop, which is a cool, coolest, coolest little feature. For me, as a trainer, it helps me like recognize or see what’s going on internally, things that I can’t actually feel, but just tells me like what’s actually happening in my body. But using a fitness tracker, because it does and fitness trackers can track your menstrual cycle for you. Or you can actually input that data in to help you recognize when you’re ready to perform and when you’re not ready to perform. And helping women find their peak or knowing when you can start to push yourself and when might be a good week to take a week off or not necessarily week off. But just managing your live. Yeah, as your load. Yeah. Gosh, a lot of women, we always want this strong, strong core, we can talk about the way that we train the core. Actually, yeah, let’s dive
Paden
into that. Because that’s the big pet peeve that most women walk in the door going, Hey, I need to just do abs. Yeah. Like looking at him and, and you’re like, there’s more going on. But it’s this classic thing. And this is like my business side coming out is like you need to understand what people want and you need to give them that and what they need. And you need to blend that in an intelligent way where they’re really satisfied, but they’re getting results above and beyond what they came in the door wanting.
Kaleena
Yeah, you know, we know that that you can’t just do 700 crunches a day and all of a sudden you’re gonna have a six pack you know, we know as trainers, it’s, it’s absolutely the kitchen is always the typical one. But when we talk about building like a foundational core, say you have an older client who’s going through menopause lives by herself. We have so many of those women in our facility and they’re amazing and they want to be strong for themselves. And they’re they’re not interested in physique looks but they truly just want to have a strong core to be able to function to be able to like move stuff themselves and just be independent and and function every day today. But training the core you know, we we can core load in so many different ways. You know, the core wants to have tension, even doing things like overhead presses or reaches or planks but moving plants providing tension for the core is a great way. There’s this big misconception that especially labor and delivery that we need to stay away from Are workouts because it’s or cache, they know how to how to properly Well,
Paden
anytime you’re prone, they get worried that you’re going to cone or yes, we can talk about.
Kaleena
Yeah, so coding is actually it’s it’s Diocese’s rec di or FTTs is however you want to say that, which is essentially you have a leak in the balloon, you know, your core, your core is, is it has this amazing ability to be elastic and to grow. And to expand, we have this linea alba, which is like a piece of Laffy Taffy. So I think of it as that, you know, it starts with the ribcage of the sternum and then runs down to the top of the pubic bone. And through pregnancy, that connective tissue expands to make room for the baby. And when we see that coning, it’s really pressure pushing into the linea. Alba. So it’s, you know, it’s a leak in the system, essentially, because your core is not really there. It’s literally just that elastic band. And during pregnancy and postpartum, that tissue is supposed to come back together. Sometimes it does. And sometimes it doesn’t, it can come back together, we just, it’s a neuromuscular dysfunction, it does actually has nothing to do with how strong your core are. But how neuromuscular li connected your core really is. So you can do all the planks and crunches in the world. But if there is a lack of nerve connectivity and proprioception, or that understanding of how the muscles actually work, then you’re not going to be able to have a strong core, a lot of women will talk about it as the pitching or the domain, Mom belly where they think etcetera fat what is just loose skin. And then we think I just need to do planks and just need to do you know prone positions to help get that strong. But anytime or push ups, you know, your the more pressure you put into that linea. Alba, the more it was hard. Yeah, the
Paden
harder it is to come back in. Yeah,
Kaleena
you’re you’re just putting more pressure against the band when the band doesn’t want more pressure and wants to be cinched up or security. Yes.
Paden
Okay, so let’s recap. Because we were such a broad topic. And I love it. It’s like let’s talk about we talked about youth athletes, and how it’s really this like three plane motion, there’s stability, mobility, like that’s really going to be a focus, particularly with these younger female athletes. And just the not that the boys don’t need it, it’s just that these girls are so much more injury prone. Yeah, and we need to take that seriously, we look at ACLs as a classic example. We’re just kind of diving into the pregnancy phase. Well, we also talked about monthly cycles. So regardless, once that period starts, like you can’t expect PRs every week, we talked about, you know, some of the symptoms that as trainers you’ll be aware of would be the urinary incontinence, it might be, you know, them feeling frustrated, and not hitting their PRs every time every week after week, and maybe you’re realizing, oh, my gosh, you should really only be really pushing for that PR the second week of the month, or like, whatever it is for that, that female in front of you. And so just acclimating to that we’ve talked about how women will be very vague with their male trainers particularly, and when they don’t tell you specifically why they won’t do something. And there’s resistance, they’re just tuning in that they could really be embarrassed about a symptom of their pcns or pelvic floor core. And just tuning in that there might be something else instead of doing what a lot of trainers I think do which is like hey, that seems like a mental roadblock. You might not be mentally tough enough to have to just do the box jump Yes, you can you can do it. I believe in you and go like Ooh Rah motivation when it’s like you’re literally missing that they’re embarrassed and this is a dysfunction, and it’s fixable. Yeah, so just bringing awareness to that. What other signs if you’re a trainer would you be on the lookout for where maybe your programming needs to adapt to meet this particular client’s needs? That we also talked about DME Domaining or coning Domingo and stomach poaching all of that being a sign that something you know didn’t that your that the muscles didn’t rewire correctly? Post birth typically, yeah. And need to kind of come back beat be really rewired back into connection.
Kaleena
Yeah, I think we could talk to you about the mental aspect for training women, it’s a lot different than the male training a male athlete, you know, some male athletes, they just want the, you know, no pain, no gain. I want you screaming in my face, which we know like, as group trainers doesn’t work for most women. Like To my knowledge, most women don’t get fired up by getting in their face and screaming at them and definitely tapping into that emotional side of thing. Women or moms who don’t know how strong they are. I think that’s one of my favorite things for how I train women differently is really providing the positive have mental feedback that you are stronger than you think you are. And then it’s not that they’re not capable of doing it is that they, we don’t have that self belief which doesn’t come as naturally to women. Or most women, I should say, some of us have our we’re just think we’re bad acids, which is great. Like, there are pens badass, and she knows it
Paden
was born in the world, way too much confidence and probably my parents just let that be. And I’m thankful we need
Kaleena
that. But you know how you adjust to train that woman who might be on the edge of a PR but just needs that little bit of extra love and support and belief from you. I mean, gosh,
Paden
and it’s, you know, it’s not to say women aren’t competitive because like the screaming in your face, I totally hear you on that. And I’m one of those Taipei’s that kind of likes some tough love. But I like competition more than I like to be screamed at. Yeah, so if you just match me next is somebody that seems like, oh, man, they’re pretty awesome. Like, I’m gonna want to keep pace. I’m gonna want to beat that pace. That’s different. But you’re talking about the messaging, empowering women, like there’s a really powerful opportunity.
Kaleena
Absolutely. There’s a powerful opportunity and even the got correcting self doubt or correcting negative self talk. Yeah. The body image issues that so many women go through not seen and men don’t go through that. But I think women are always so much more critical of ourselves. We want to compare ourselves to everyone you know, the constant looking in the mirror the self doubt the name is no doubt though. The focus so much on your weight instead of what your body can do,
Paden
or how you feel in your clothes. Yeah, like I feel amazing. Oh, shit, I’m 15 pounds heavier than I was at 12. Yeah, and you’re 42 it’s like, come on. Yeah. life stages. Yeah.
Kaleena
I mean, and we say this even as, as trainers, you know, we might say we think it’s motivated. But for somebody could be really toxic to say like, Hey, let’s work off that cookie. Or like, let’s you know this like, yeah, earn it language. First of all, I wanted that cookie. Yeah. And I deserve to
Paden
have that pleasure. What Yeah, like, I wanted a cookie. And there is my most beautiful moment of my day. Yeah, not
Kaleena
make me feel bad. Yeah, there should not be like a food shaming or food guilt or working off the holiday way. How about maybe like, let’s get back to good habits, like, you know, it’s okay to treat yourself that is totally fine. You shouldn’t have to shame yourself or starve yourself. Like, I’m a firm believer in that, like, I want the burrito, I’m gonna eat the burrito. And I’m not gonna worry about how it adds on an extra pound or two for next day. You know, my favorite things like precision nutrition that we’ve done, highly recommend, if you’ve never looked into that, but it says, just be 1% better. Yeah, you know, you can be 1% better than yesterday. And not it doesn’t have to be this accumulated. You know, I need to be 100% better, like the diet culture is just awful. For one. Yes. That’s
Paden
women up to failed. Yeah, I think I mean, it’s one thing to do like a detox post holidays, in a sense of like, kind of getting some toxins out. But in terms of doing it seasonally, it’s can be quite damaging. Yeah. The other thing, well, we, you mentioned it and this could be its own series of podcasts, just like what it how do we empower and break these negative cycles that hold us back, emotionally, mentally, etc. And women are such an amazing opportunity to talk about that in fitness. But we also want to make sure we don’t have like the ERNIT language. Like, to me, it’s like, I hear a lot of trainers saying things like, you know, earn that weekend that you’re gonna binge drink or like 16 burritos or whatever it’s like, and and there’s this joke around it that can be fun and community building. But subversively, it’s not as uplifting or funny, because there is this mindset of, oh, I don’t get to have the chocolate because I didn’t work out today. And it’s this deprivation and it’s guilty and it’s punishing yourself around food as a weapon. Yeah. Against like, it’s like Love Your Body thin don’t hate it. What did they say don’t hate your body thin Love Your Body thin, but there’s some cool catchy phrase on it. But the concept being you know, you can get there any way do you want to get there through depriving yourself through that or do you want to get serious about I love the way my body feels. I love the way it looks. I love the way it performs. For me.
Kaleena
I mean, we’ve talked about like body positivity, we’re talking about how we always want to look how we did five years ago. And then five years ago, you wanted to look like you did five years before that, you know, like I think is just so interesting for women, especially to we always do that you’re like, you know, you you hate the body that you’re in until five years later, like, oh my gosh, I wish I had that body. And then how much time do we waste? You know, like, see with all that negative self talk or not eating Things that you want to eat or drinking the things that you want to drink because you’re afraid of what the consequences quote unquote consequences are. But how we as trainers can shift that mindset and to shift that culture. There’s a difference between like being healthy and being overweight. Certainly, we’re getting into like an unhealthy phase. But certainly we shouldn’t be punishing ourselves for the weekend or a Tuesday night when you want to not do anything, or you know, eat how you want to eat.
Paden
Yeah. And the other thing I want to mention is, that’s one of the reasons we don’t have mirrors in Gymnazo. Actually, Michael tuned in on this super early in his career, which was he just got sick of watching women particularly look at themselves doing workouts in a mirror and just see how the, you could just see the critical illness in their face. And he was like, let’s just distracting everybody from the function of, I don’t want to look perfect doing workouts. I want to feel strong, confident and capable doing exercises, which means I need to stop crushing on this mirror reflection, and you need to actually know what it feels like and use the coach to be your mirror back to you. Yeah. And it’s interesting how it plays into so Okay, that’s good. What about pair menopausal? Let’s go there. Yeah,
Kaleena
um, gosh, puberty. 2.0. Yeah. Which I was like, We got such the short end of the stick, that like to have to go through that twice, essentially, like hot flashes, I cannot have mood swings, night sweats, like, it just sounds freaking terrible. And like, your metabolism changes again, you know, hormones change. Again, we lose tension or tissues, we all of a sudden, we have I call them the bat wings, you know, the little floppy underarms that we get and you’re like, how do I make that go away? Well, it’s like you we might be able to we might not it’s a tension and tissue kind of deal. But training women to still be strong. I think we there’s so many different avenues for fitness which is great because not every brand of fitness is for everyone. Like you know, CrossFit is for some people bars for some people yoga is for some people, but you don’t have to fit into each basket.
Paden
And you could do all of them in some combination to
Kaleena
you can do all of them. But and then I know I totally lost track of where I was going with it
Paden
was two of us right now I feel like I’m what a year and a half postpartum with baby two and you’re in pregnancy mode. The brain fog is surreal at this point. But what you were saying was that we get to go through period 2.0 or men or would you
Kaleena
pause Yeah, puberty to puberty? That’s what it was he really 2.0 Yeah, but we just use the losing that connectivity in the tissues and we just how we rebuild that strength and confidence and even building lower body strength that oh, sorry, that’s what I was getting it. So many avenues don’t promote enough strength based exercises or promoting strength or women are afraid to get stronger you
Paden
go that’s a big objection. I don’t want to lift heavier all look like a boy. Yeah.
Kaleena
Which you’re not, you know, you have to eat very specifically and train very specifically to get to that, that I’m going to put bulky in quotes, air quotes here. But that bulky book, you’re not going to achieve in most gyms and you’re not going to achieve unless you’re specifically trying to you know, your own personal opinion of what bulky looks like is going to differ from woman to woman. But I can tell you what, most women are not bulky by any means.
Paden
Now if I lift heavy, I still look ballerina ish. I think that’s gonna change anytime soon.
Kaleena
And our nutrition has so much to do with how we look physically to, but you know, promoting that strength and actually lifting weights like for all the moms out there, or for anyone who trains them on? Do great question. Do you pick your kids up? Yes. How much does your friggin kid weigh? Like, you know,
Paden
Jackson’s 25 pounds now?
Kaleena
Yeah. And like, do you ever lift him up? Overhead cord? You know, both hands? Yeah. But like you throw a woman in a gym and you tell her take 25 pounds up overhead she loses her mind. She’s like, I want the 10 pound weights and I want to do multiple reps. And that’s all I want to do. Even you have to hold Jackson and squat down. Now you’re squatting with 25 pounds. Yeah, in not just both hands, but one hand on one hip Gotcha. We should be training every mom and every soon to be mom with unilateral loading and if you’re not doing that as a trainer you should start because or if you are mom you know you do stuff with just one hand you got to hold the kid in one hand unless you got him strapped to you super but most of the time if you’re having to hold your kid it’s a unilateral load which means your body’s going to be off balance you’re gonna be tilted to one side. Wrap your body for that and train that way but training for strength like as a gosh my aunt when she had her there now my my cousin’s kids, but her grandkids she got so lean and she got so strong in a matter of months because all of a sudden she was having to left her grandbaby and before was Zumba Yeah, and she looked actually so much healthier once she had the grandkids because she put on some muscle and she wasn’t then afraid of picking stuff up or carrying things out of the house, you know, for menopausal women super important to maintain that strength as we age, the biggest fear that most not just women but the elderly have seasoned citizens are not elderly and become seasoned citizens is falling and breaking your hip. Yeah, falling and breaking something. And so how do we better prepare them for that with keep up their strength work, holding on to something all the time and doing little squats, it can be great in some aspects. But unless you have to walk holding onto a wall, the time they need to be able to do some sort of stability, mobility at different ranges of motion, and training their hips, and their ankles and their feet, you know, something that’s overlooked to sitting on a machine isn’t isn’t going to help them necessarily get functionally stronger, no through this. But you know, for menopausal women help them stay strong and encourage them to be strong. And lifting weights, even getting your groceries in out of the car. It’s my favorite way to help encourage women for how to get stronger is just relating it back to their day to day life. You have to have a dog like do you pick up your dog. Like my mom’s got this little 12 pounder, little, little barbecue dog. And you know, but she still needs to be able to get the dog up, carry to the car lifted out of the car for women, like older men and you got big dogs. I’m a big dog type of gal. Like I love my little 60 pound nugget. But you know, I love big dogs and I want to be able to control that. So you know, like if your dog wants to go chase a squirrel and you’re not prepped for it, like what’s going to happen in that situation?
Paden
No, it’s totally true. And it’s good, it’s good for us to consider all these scenarios, because that’s what makes training women so unique is it’s not just oh, here’s how I mean, I do like the suggestion of of, you know how to how to understand squats being different for women, etc. And there’s so many little tips I’m going to try to extract from you here because I know you know all these things. But there’s just so many factors. And so I think we err on the one size fits all fitness model. And it’s part we’ve been told in the marketing world that you just need to tell everyone like, oh, we can make it work for you. But can you well and do it well. And I think that’s a deep insecurity with a lot of trainers. So like, as you kind of unpack all these different kind of life phases and some different factors that are going on. Like if you were to tighten a bone, say like, this is the kind of stuff you should be considering you’ve dropped a couple hints but are there some kind of general directions you would advise people to go on?
Kaleena
If you train women, you need to have a basic understanding of the pelvic core neuromuscular system, very basic understanding because the pelvic floor not neuromuscular system is composed of the respiratory diaphragm, your abdominal core muscles, the low back and hip muscles. So your entire like actual core, and then your pelvic floor. Everybody has one, right? Yeah, men, men have a pelvic floor core, the rest of the diaphragm, but women, especially our pelvic core, or pcns, for sure, goes through so many more changes than men and has so many more opportunities for dysfunction, you need to have a basic understanding of how that works. Because that will greatly influence how you train women at any age at any phase of life. And that is where, you know, this might be a good opportunity to talk about mentorship program. So we have a whole mentorship program where I mentor you and explain what the pcns is how it functions, how to train women, specifically for any type of dysfunction, whether it be incontinence, diathesis prolapse and so many, so much more knee pain, back pain, specifically for women, you know, and going from there, that’s a really cool opportunity to learn all about that and hear not just how to treat the dysfunctions but how to incorporate that into an entire class. I created the female court conversion program, which has helped hundreds of women overcome minor dysfunctions that they thought they would have to live with forever that we may just take an exercise class once a week we reset their neuromuscular system and all of a sudden they’re going oh my gosh, no pee my pants anymore. Or
Paden
I feel my abs after a workout for the first time in years. Yes, so many different things you don’t think about alleviated my back pain? Yeah, I can run without planning my route around bathroom breaks. Yes. So these are really cool wins for people that are hard to like, no one walks in the door saying this is my goal, because you don’t even know it’s possible to have it.
Kaleena
Yeah. So many people so many women don’t know that it’s possible that they’re capable. I mean, 33% of women deal with some sort of peace CNS dysfunction in their lifetime.
Paden
But what I love about your the mentorship program that you built is you’re gonna give them the programming, you’re going to give them the templates, you give them the workshop, even that you share with nurses and doctors and OBGYN is to build trust in what you’re doing, how you can partner with them in the program. And then you make sure that everyone that works with you one on one gets that real deep dive into science so that they feel like they mastered it, and they can speak with confidence in informed circles. And that’s what I think is super powerful. Yeah,
Kaleena
absolutely, you’ll be able to change lives. Yeah, absolutely. You it will change how you train women, how you treat women and how you fix certain problems mean, there’s so much that we’ve addressed that you think is a knee issue, that’s really a pelvic core issue.
Paden
And one last thing I’ll mention about this program is if you’re a male trainer listening to this, just so you know, we sat our entire team of which I think at the time, there were three females on the team, and the rest were men. And we had so we had a women’s health specialist, physical therapists come and train everybody on what the heck’s going on and from their Kaleena built the program, but the men need to know it too. Because even if women clients are are going to be vague with you, and are going to not really want to talk to you about it and or more like you don’t want to talk to them about it, because it’s really awkward for you to just knowing it and harnessing it so that you can program for it. You can tweak for it, you can modify workouts for it will take you to the next level, like CJ Michael, Mitch, Jonathan, Shawn, like all our guide trainers, like they will secretly give tweaks and modifications for these women without having to go there with them.
Kaleena
Yeah. And, you know, we’ll give you enough confidence to speak about it in a professional manner. How many women go to see a male OBGYN Fair enough. So you know, just because, you know, if you can speak about it intelligently and articulate things well, and give them the wise, it’s not an awkward conversation in science, which is the best part. You know, it’s so this is one of the issues that I had was with credibility was that I had never had kids before. Yeah, three years later, I have proven so many women wrong and it feels cool, established. Reputation, like in our medical community, we have OBGYN and physical therapists who will refer patients to me into our exercise program for prenatal and postnatal care, you know, to help women better prepare themselves because doing key goals is not going to fix your shit. It’s not or or help you in any way shape or form it has.
Paden
I mean, well, is it such a thing that you’re so loose? That’s the only shot you have. So you need to debunk this right now.
Kaleena
So many women think that if they have incontinence issues, that it’s just like, my pelvic floor is weak. Or if you’ve had kids that you’re just like, it’s shot to hell down there. Like it’s, it’s never coming back. It’s not going to be the same, that’s for sure. But it’s not necessarily a matter of loose tissue or not strong tissue. For labor delivery can be a very violent process and there’s tearing
Paden
these days like trauma it’s like a car accident, like you get 100%
Unknown Speaker
is an
Paden
isolated car accident and you need to recover from it strategically.
Kaleena
Yeah, anytime there’s that much blood in any situation you go to physical therapy afterwards. Amen. Except with labor delivery, they’re like here’s your kid Good luck with that. But seriously, so and there’s no there’s no like recovery program and labor delivery is a marathon most people don’t sign up for a marathon. He’s like I’m not going to train for this.
Paden
Yeah, I’m 23 hours Kennedy Yeah, so there’s that that’s literally feels like a marathon
Kaleena
the FCC program that I’ve designed is designed to prepare your body for labor and delivery as much as we can obviously they can’t simulate pushing a watermelon out but we can and then helped you to recover postpartum but if you have so we were talking about pelvic floor has been weaker that misconception if you tore during your during labor and delivery, which most women do, that’s my understanding. We’re heading to pz automate, which is you if you are pregnant, or have pregnant clients tell them don’t get into pz automates
Paden
or as the nurses once told me good job for advocating for your perineum. Yeah, pretty Oh, and I was like, that’s what you call it. Whatever. I was like, just don’t cut me anywhere. Yeah.
Kaleena
If you had a tear that heals right, or or a cut that heals in anywhere else, you have scar tissue, you build up you have a scab, right, it’s a wound, it’s like a flesh wound and not to mention you all of this pressure forcing down upon that wound or that scar constantly because it’s the base of your whole core right? There’s no gravity pushing anything out when bathroom number one or number two, you’re gonna have pressure there. But if you have pressure and you had scarring and you had tearing, that’s tight tissue, it’s going to be have, there’s a dysfunction there because the tissue can be too tight. Not because it’s too loose because you had a baby like, remember, like you pushed out your vaginal canal not and you’re actually looking out does not influence your bladder, that’s a whole separate track system, there’s different plumbing, so that it’s a different thing. But the pressure system that your pelvic floor is the base of that pressure system. So when there’s dysfunction in the pelvic floor, whether it’s too tight, or too loose, like we’re seeing too tight from trauma, or too loose, because you don’t, you’ve never exercised before, maybe you don’t even know how to use some of those muscles down there. That influences how your body and how your core how your pcns controls pressure. That’s where we see so many dysfunctions with prolapse with incontinence. Got pain, with sex, you know, all of these all of these super fun things that we can actually work to correct. And every woman is different. And that’s the other fun thing. I’ve been here six years, and it’s been an awesome ride. But from the very first moment, I started teaching Gymnazo or coaching. I had women tell me, just you wait, they call the speed ladder, the bladder ladder. Because they do quick feet, they want to pee and just be like, Just you wait, so you have kids and as you’re thinking like, I’m gonna pass on that offer. Thank you. And now knowing what we know, it’s it’s a matter of training your body and knowing like, Okay, well, that motion causes this dysfunction. This is what we need to work on. Yeah. Like
Paden
that. You don’t need to join membership to that club to be part to exhibit Choi, the female experience.
Kaleena
No, it’s not a badge of honor quite nicely. It’s not a badge of honor to wear and it’s an expensive dysfunction. Yes, on average that man on average, women spend $50,000 in their lifetime on incontinence products, not not sanitary products, incontinence products alone BS. Yeah, diapering diapers depends, like, every time I see one of those fucking commercials for like, laugh with confidence. Depends on like screaming at the TV like no, like, that’s not how it works. Like, it doesn’t have to be this way. You know, it’s just it’s mind blowing to me. But
Paden
no, I, we will we will do another episode on this and in a more deep dive experience. But the concept being like, we do need to train women more intentionally, we will need to understand and I love what you said, like your core advice coming out of this episode is you guys need to understand the pelvic corner muscular system, you need to understand all the pieces that play apart. And when a woman complains about low back pain. Like what do most trainers think about
Unknown Speaker
and think it’s a weak core.
Paden
Yeah. And it it’s not that it’s maybe not? I mean, wouldn’t you say that kind of fits, there’s doing
Kaleena
it the wrong way? Certainly could be and certainly a big suspect in that, you know, something’s not working the way that it’s supposed to. Yeah, could be the core. Could be the hips, you know, could be the thoracic spine.
Paden
Yeah, low black screaming because it’s picking up the slack. It wasn’t meant to exactly
Kaleena
so you know, just because, you know, if you have if you took NASM, you check as you did Certified Strength and Conditioning, you know, they give you how to how to cause muscular change, right? They tell you like your biceps, do this, your hamstring does that your quads this But nowhere in it, did they talk about the pelvic floor or the pelvic core? And how that influences how the body trains? Yeah, even which missed opportunity. Yeah. So have your education, educate yourself some more, you know, it will definitely influence how you train the female body and how you train your female clients in general, and you’re gonna get better results. Yeah, there’s a huge, it’s literally life changing for them. And for some women, you know, to be able to gift them movement back is a big one.
Paden
For some of our clients. It was I finally got to I you know, my son threw a ball and I chased after and I didn’t pay. Yeah. And it’s like that moment, and you’re like, it’s so crazy until it’s you. It doesn’t feel that significant, but I don’t care who you are. I don’t care that Rachel Hollis talks in the first chapter of her epic book about how she jumps on the trampoline and pees all over her genes. That yes, we can laugh in close circles of women with large amounts of wine to get us to talk about and admit to these symptoms, but nobody’s happy about the symptoms, and there’s no culture around it. And I think that’s the last thing I wanted to chat about was that CrossFit video that lit you up on this subject? Oh, for the love Senate. If you’re in a car Astrid we’re not trying to hate on you. But you know, listen to this description
Kaleena
not at all. So there is this, this epic video that was going around that was, I understand the message behind it was like embrace it and just, you know be a badass and trying to like be in solidarity and standards of their women but it was the wrong, wrong message at that time. It was these women going through this CrossFit video and they were they’re doing their CrossFit competitions badass, but they’re doing these box jumps. And every time they did a box jump, they peed. Yeah, and most CrossFitters in these competitions are at a sports bra. And then they’re in teeny, tiny speck pants. And so there’s no absorption there. I’m gonna tell you, they’re not wearing pants. No, we’re in a diaper in those. They just pee onto the floor or down their legs. Yeah, it’s like and splattered everywhere after these box shows you got to do like 35 50 box shows, however many it is they have like a puddle, a legitimate puddle. And then I was mortified. Because you know, as a trainer and group training, we clean, we clean up after our clients is like, I would fucking die if I had to clean up piss. Like, I had to clean up, someone was pissed. But the whole message was like, You’re not doing it hard enough. If you don’t pay yourself. And we had this event this glamorizing it, oh my gosh, we had, I think she was an OB, who was who said that? She was like, if you’re not paying yourself, and you’re not working hard enough, and it mortified me because knowing what we know about the pcns, like, that’s not true, you should be able to jump and land and not pee everywhere. There’s something wrong, like legitimately functionally, like, in all aspects, there’s something wrong and that was just like this huge red flag for how we treat that or how we look at that like this. It’s not, you know, I can, I can say that was great that they were kind of like, you know what, I’m just going to embrace this. This is empowering, I have kids, this is just what happens to your body is as you have kids, but I’m still a badass athlete, I can can jump on board with that in in some aspect. But I think there’s better ways to go about that. There’s certainly like, we can fix this actually. And we can be better in treating this and understanding it and not having that be the standard solitude moment.
Paden
100%. So, all right, we’re gonna wrap this episode up, I’m super excited that we got a chance to chat with you guys about training women. And really, our big hope in this as you listen to this is just understanding like, Man, I didn’t realize there’s this gap in the traditional educating body of knowledge, that is the pcns And like, I need to dial that in. And we encourage you to do that you can encourage you to go Google things, you know, try to figure it out, piece it together, you can definitely go that route. If you want to partner with us, we have strategic programs put in place, and even sell our programming on it. For people that really just want to, to learn with us and from us exactly how we’re getting these results. But more than anything, just getting empowered through knowledge on how you can really impact women in in specific ways and in ways that really hold them back from feeling athletic ever again. I think that’s the big thing. When you have these embarrassing symptoms, you bench yourself as an athlete because you’re embarrassed. And so if you have women who are pretending that they aren’t as athletic or not lifting the heavyweights, not jumping, not doing this be ladders, like what’s really going on, and we hope in this episode, you can go gosh, I now have a different way of thinking about the women’s bodies, and what could be going on here and then go do something about it.
Kaleena
So I want to say yep, super stoked to talk about this and talk more about it and on you know, if you’re looking for resources, check out our website, a whole suite program on female core conversion, how that works and some basic information on the pcns there if you’re interested about that, awesome
Michael Hughes
Hey all. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. And if you did, please share with your fitness obsessed friends and peers who are also navigating this world of fitness and trying to succeed the trends and misinformation. As you guys can see this podcast is basically a masterclass for trainers wanting to level up in their coaching skills and their fitness business model. We launched this in 2020 because you and your fitness tribe deserve to see an unfiltered look at all the aspects of what it takes to stand out as a next generation coach and build a successful fitness business. So share it far and wide. And please when you do do me a favor, take a screenshot of this screen and share it to your social media accounts and use the hashtag Gymnazo podcast that’s hashtag Gymnazo podcast that way we can see you and share your posts with our audience. And finally, when you’re ready, go the next level as a coach or or in your business. And to reach more people, please go check out gymnazoedu.com, we have put together the best 90 Day coaching program on the market for trainers wanting to become a masterful practitioner, and build a business that gives them the freedom and impact. So let us help you do just that. We have online training and one on one coaching to guide you through a full 90 Day certification. We even get you training our clients live because it’s always better to work out your kinks on someone else’s clients than yours. But we promise you this, your clients will be blown away by the transformation our program will help you make, you’ll be masterful at a whole new level and part of an incredible community of coaches worldwide, taking their skills to the next level. So if you thought this episode had some fire to it, and inspired you to take action, wait until you see what we deliver on this program. So just go to gymnazoedu.com. And we’ll see you on the other side. Remember that turning your passion for fitness into transformation and sustainable business is critical to reaching the people and lives you were put on earth to help it matters and truly can make an impact in other people’s lives. So, hope you do that. Keep sharing a passion and we’ll talk to you soon.
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