078: How to Maximize Your Home Workouts While Social Distancing

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps after Babies radio episode number 78. Hello and welcome to Biceps after Babies radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PRs. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, online fitness coach, wife, and mom of four. My guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise mindset, personal development, and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel, and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you, my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in, now let’s jump into today’s episode.

(0:46)

Hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and I don't know about you, but this has been a crazy crazy last week. So I'm recording this on March. 16th, Monday, March 16, this comes out tomorrow. And I usually don't do this, I usually try to be ahead in my recording so my team can get the show notes together and graphics together and all of those things. But I really felt strongly that I should come on and address what's going on, right, like what's going on in the world today. Because I feel like since last Thursday, we have just had so much change in our life, and so many new things and having Coronavirus starting to spread in the United States has just changed things for a lot of people. And I think it is silly to just continue on, like, pretending like life isn't different now. Because it is for me, it's different, probably for you and for a lot of people in the world right now. And I kind of wanted to address that and kind of come at it from a health and fitness perspective.

And what you can do at this time because one of the biggest questions that I've started seeing both of my clients and on on social media is, “Oh my gosh, if we are quarantined or if we are supposed to be social distancing ourselves that for a lot of people means staying home from the gym, and how am I going to work out? How am I going to eat healthy? How am I going to be able to manage the emotions?” Right? I think that's something that's really important to say first, is that you likely have so many emotions that are going on with this. There are people who are feeling like it's this is an overreaction, right? Like maybe that's you, maybe you're like this is totally an overreaction. People are silly, we don't need to be like taking this so seriously. And then there's people in the total opposite who are like, we are not taking this seriously enough. People don't understand how dangerous this is. We need to be staying home we need to be living in our exposure. And then most people I would say is probably somewhere in the middle where we're like, I don't know what is going to happen. I don't know how bad this is going to get. And we're trying to be good citizens and we're trying to limit the spread and to try to keep our distance from people. But at the same time, trying to balance that with living a life and the social and economic repercussions that come from staying home. You know, if we're looking at this just from a health perspective, everybody should just stay home and like not go anywhere. But we can't just look at this from a health perspective, we have to look at this from a societal perspective, from an economic perspective. And from an economic perspective, like having everybody stay home for two months, is one of the worst things that you can do. So, you know, as I can think about this, and as I talked to people, it is that competing interests between economically what is best for our country and health wise what is best for our country and trying to balance the two almost opposing values.

How to Balance Our Values  3:43  

And I want to bring that over into our health and fitness journey because I see this a lot in people in their health and fitness journey and this idea of what what you value and what are your highest values. I am incredibly big in working with my clients in figuring out and quantifying almost What are your biggest values? Because I believe as you go into a fitness journey, it's so important to be hundred percent clear on what are your non negotiables? Like, what is, what are you willing to change in order to get the result that you want? And what are you 100% not willing to change, right? Like if if you have a high value of eating dinner with your family and eating the same dinner and that and that's a value for you. And that is something that you are not willing to give up in order to get the result that you want. There's nothing wrong with that. That's awesome that you've identified that. And now you can create and build your plan around that value, right, you can include that value into the plan that you create. And so as we do this, as we get clear on what our values are, we can then create a plan for our success that includes those values. And I think it's the same thing when so we can take that over from you know, how we're dealing with the Coronavirus and again, what are our values and we have these competing values, right? We have economic values and we have health values. And those are kind of competing against each other. And we have to kind of balance it, we have to kind of rank it like what is more important at this time.

Looking to the Future  5:08  

And you can do that same thing in your fitness journey of being clear on like, at this moment in time, what is your highest value? And how can you take that value, hold on to it, make sure that it is a part of your plan for success over the next 2, 4, 8 whoever knows how long this is going to last period of time, because here's the reality. This is going to be over at some point, right? Like we don't have any idea of how long it's going to be or when it's going to be over. But this will be over at some point. And at that point, where do you want to be? What is the most important thing to you? And how can you make sure that you prioritize that this that whatever is most important to you during this time? So I think it is worth doing a little bit of soul searching and sitting down with yourself and really listing out what is most important to you. And for most of us, I would say, our family, right, like our family and the health of our family and the health of those people close by to us, is the most important thing. And when you start to compare it, like do it, would I rather lose 10 pounds? Or would I rather have my kids healthy and safe? Like, I think almost all of us would choose to have our kids healthy and safe. And so when you have some of these competing values, or you have values that are maybe one or a little higher than the other, we have to take that into consideration and recognize that, Yeah, maybe you have a goal to lose 10 pounds, maybe you have a goal to get a pull up, maybe you have a goal, you know to exercise every single day of the week, maybe those are your goals. But when we come at it from what are my non negotiables. During this time, we can make sure that we include that in our plan for your fitness goals for your success. And that to me is such an empowering and impactful way to come at the next however long we are social distancing ourselves, however long we're quarantine ourselves, we can still get really clear on what our values are and creating a plan for success.

Finding Your Values  7:00  

To that, because I don't think, I don't think most people who are listening to this are just gonna throw their hands up and and say, “You know what, for the next however long, like, I'm just not even going to care. I just like to eat whatever I want, I'm just going to not exercise, I'm just not gonna care.” You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if that was kind of your mentality. But I do think that a lot of people are feeling pressure right now, because there are higher values, right, like keeping your family safe, keeping your family from getting sick, monetary and economic impact that it may be having in your life, and jobs and worrying about paying bills like those are real things that you may be experiencing right now. And I think it's okay to understand that and say that that's something that's really important right now. And then go to your fitness journey and figure out how you can make it fit in with those values. Because I do believe that every single one of you listening can create a plan for success that highlights and preserves the things that are most important to you. And at the same time allows you to feel good allows you to de stress allows you to continue on in reaching for your goals. I do think that there is value in reevaluating goals and again, aligning them with whatever values that you have over the next little while.

Takeaways for Today  8:15 

So today though, I really want to focus on giving you some really tangible takeaways for how to exercise at home. Because I think this is one of the most immediate repercussions that people are seeing, is that they're not wanting to go to the gym, they're not wanting to go to classes, they're not wanting to go out. And that is requiring them to stay home and to maybe change up their workout routine and workout from home. And so that's what I want to talk about today. And that's what I want to help you with in in some really tangible takeaways of how you can best do that. Before I help my clients create a plan before I create a plan before and before I want you to create a plan. I always, always, always always and if you listen to my podcasts, you know that this is how I operate. I always create the plan based off of the goal that you have. And so the first step to me is figuring out what the goal is. We go to the end, we go to the end zone, we get to the finish line, and we figure out what the finish line is what the goal is. And when you get really clear on the goal, then you are able to reverse engineer a process to get there. If you don't know the destination, if you don't know where you're going, you're gonna have a lot harder time actually getting there because you have no idea where there is. So for you that means I think it's very clear to figure out why you are exercising like what is your purpose in exercising because there's I would say there are two main reasons why people exercise and specifically in this time, why you're choosing to exercise I think the first reason is, people are doing it for health. They're doing it for mental sanity, they're doing it to be able to keep up a routine and to just move their body right because it feels good. It helps you get through the day. And that's the first reason which is very different from the second reason, which is To improve in strength or endurance or see some sort of progression, right? See the weights go up, see more muscle mass, get your first pull up. That is more of a like goal oriented or training oriented reason for working out. So the first step is to get clear, are you doing this to just move your body and to have you know, a calorie burn and to be able to work off some stress? Are you doing this because you are wanting to progress you are wanting to gain muscle, you are wanting to see something different than, you know maybe what you created in the past. Those are very different workout styles. And I would even call the first one more of a workout. You're just wanting to get your heart rate up, you're wanting to be healthy and you're wanting to move your body versus training and training has a purpose. It has a goal. It has a linear path in order to get there so they're they're different and you need to set them up different, but during this time when you're working at home, be very clear is your goal just to move Or is your goal to actually progress or get somewhere because when you're setting up your workouts, those are totally different styles of workouts and they're totally, you need to set them up differently in order to achieve that end result.

Goal to Move Your Body  11:12  

So the first one that I'm going to talk about is somebody who just wants to move their body, they want to maybe burn some calories, they want to have that stress relief, they just want to be able to keep moving and and do that at home now. And if that's the case for you, one of the best ways to work out that I can recommend is incorporating some sort of hiit or incorporating bodyweight movements into a workout. And one of my favorite ways to do that, or one of the easiest ways to do that, I think, is to do a deck of cards workout. And if you've never done a deck of cards workout, there are four suits, you know, you know what cards are like, right? There's four suits, and each of those suits you make to correspond to some sort of bodyweight exercise. And the cool thing about this is that it's really easy to interchange bodyweight exercises, it's easy to pick new ones each day. It's easy to focus on lower body if you want to or upper body or a total body workout based off of what you pick. So you basically pick four bodyweight exercises. And some examples of those that you could pick are jumping jacks, or burpees, or push ups or lunges or squats. Or you could even do like a jumping lunge or a jumping, squat, sit ups, something that you can do with zero equipment. Or if you want to, you can throw in some equipment as well, you kind of can make this custom to whatever you personally have, but you pick four exercises, each corresponding to one of the suits. And then you mix up your deck of cards. You pull off the first one, and the suit tells you the exercise that you do and the number tells you how many reps you do. And so if you pull out a two of hearts and hearts is corresponding to jumping jacks and you would do two jumping jacks and then you would pull up the next card and that will tell you the next exercise that you You perform. And you can either do this going through the entire deck, or you can do it by setting a time saying I want to work out for 20 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever, you just go to that time and you go through as many cards at the deck as you can do in that time. And this is a really easy way just to get a good like movement, get some calories burned to just feel good and be able to get a sweat on. And I think that's a really awesome thing to do right now. It's simple, you could do it without any equipment, and you can rotate it so that you don't get bored. So it doesn't always have to be you know, like squat lunge, push up jumping jacks, every day you could mix it up and you could try different things you could throw different exercises in there to kind of keep it new and exciting. So I think that is one of the most simple ways to just get a good solid workout in at home.

Free Download  13:49 

And in order to help you with that I've actually created a free download. So if you want just an example of that deck of cards style workout, I have a really simple download you get it for FREE. If you go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/78, you'll see the download there. But it's just one that you can print off, you can use, you can also create your own. But I wanted to give you something that would make it easy to be able to do that. So go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/78. That's where you'll find the show notes for this episode. And we'll have that free download there.

Strength Goals  14:25  

Now, if you are wanting to add muscle, or you're wanting to progress your lifts, or you're wanting to get stronger over this period of time, we need to have a really important conversation about progressive overload. And this is a concept that not enough people understand, especially when it comes to gaining muscle. A lot of people just think that lifting weights equals gaining muscle and it doesn't unless you also make sure that you are progressively overloading. So what is progressive overload mean to understand the definition To understand how to implement this into your workouts, you have to understand the stress recovery adaptation cycle. And that is the cycle that our body goes through in a lot of different areas, but especially in weight training, and this idea that our bodies are adaptive to our environment and to what is being required of us. So what happens is that your body is experiencing some sort of stress in the way of weight training, it is the stress of having to lift a weight a certain amount of times, and that stress on your body causes an adaptation. So if you allow your body to recover from that stress your body that will then adapt to whatever the stress that was placed upon it equaled. So for example, if you go into the gym, and you lift 15 pound dumbbells and you do a set of 10, you have placed a stress on your body equal to that 15 pound dumbbell, doing it 10 times, you then allow your body to recover. And as your, if your body can recover from that stress, then it will adapt to be strong enough to lift a 15 pound dumbbell for 10 reps.

Progressive Overload  16:13  

The problem comes when you then go back into the gym and you lift a 15 pound dumbbell for 10 reps again, and then you go back and you do the same thing again, and then you do it again. And I see this a lot with people, especially women, because they often aren't as well versed in the gym, they often are as well versed with weights, and it's new. And they just think that lifting weights equals gaining muscle and so they'll go into the gym and they'll continue to lift 15 pound dumbbells over and over and over again. And the problem with that is that you have only given your body a certain amount of stress and it is only adapted to that certain amount of stress and it's not going to adapt any further. And so you will not gain any muscle if you continue to lift the same weights in the same reps. And so what we have to have is an incremental overload or an incremental, progressive overload to the body so that you are slowly increasing the stress placed on the body, the body then recovers and then adapts to that slightly higher stress. And that is how we slowly over time add strength. That is how we slowly over time add muscle because we are basically forcing and telling our body that this is required that it needs to adapt to this higher amount of work, because it's necessary and so the body responds, but the body is only going to respond and only going to adapt if you apply that stimulus and you apply that added stress on to the body over time. And so if you want to gain strength, if you want to gain muscle, if you want to see a progression in your body and your physique, you have to be making sure that progressive overload is occurring in your training.

Unknown Speaker  17:52 

And so what does that look like? When we actually get down to the granular level, that means that as you go back to the gym, it's an important that you are tracking your weights and your reps. So that over time, you can make sure that you are intentionally increasing those, that you're intentionally increasing the number of reps that you're doing. Or you're intentionally increasing the number of sets that you're doing. So that you are experiencing that progressive overload over time, so that your body is actually forced to adapt to the higher and bigger stress. Now, you can tell from this that one of the challenging aspects then of working out at home is being able to increase that stimulus over time. And so if you only have a limited set of dumbbells, it can be hard to continue that progressive overload over time, which is one of the reasons that we like to bring barbells into the equation and into the mix because you can progressively overload a barbell much easier than you can do with dumbbells.

Compound Lifts  18:56 

Now I do want to make a distinction because as people start to implement of overload, they start to understand that, you know, you can start to add weight to your curls your like bicep curls for a little while. But you're going to get to a point very quickly where you can't add weight every single time that you go, right? Like, you're not seeing anybody bicep curling 65 or any females is using bicep curls and 65s in the gym. And that's the reason for that is because with isolation moves, it is more challenging to progressive overload. And you have to be a little bit more creative with how you do that progressive overloading, then it is with a big compound lifts. So a compound lift is one that includes more muscle groups. That includes multiple muscle groups, things like the squat, right, you're not just using your quads, you're also using your glutes, you're using your hamstrings, you're using your core, you're using your calves, you're using your back like you're using multiple muscle groups. And when you do that you can much more easily progressive overload so you can increase your squat for a lot longer than you're able to, let's say increase your dumbbell curl. And that's one of the reasons that barbells are so fantastic. And it's one of the reasons that if you're really looking to put on some muscle, it would behoove you at some point to make that transition from dumbbells to barbells. And the progression that I see for most women is a lot of women come in, you know, very comfortable with cardio, and maybe not so comfortable with weights and that first step so that if that's you, that first step I would suggest you make is from cardio to either machines at the gym, or dumbbells, and that is a leap that is a little bit more of like a stepping stone, you can get a great workout with dumbbells, you can do progressive overload with dumbbells to some extent, and that's a great place to start. If you have kind of tapped out and you can't continue to progressive overload with just your dumbbells, then that's when I suggest making that leap to barbells and being able to add more weight to the bar being able to one be also more aware of your body.

Proprioception  21:02 

So one of the most important things when you move to barbells, and one of the concerns that a lot of people have is that they're going to get hurt. And one of the most important things about starting with dumbbells or or you know, you can jump straight to barbells. But starting with a very lightweight dumbbell or a barbell is that you're able to start to understand proprioception which is visualizing your body in space. So when you go down into a squat, being able to have the motor control and Mind-Body connection, to know where your knees are tracking during that squat to know where your hips are supposed to be sitting, to know where your chest is supposed to be sitting. And so doing a squat with first bodyweight before starting to load it before starting to add weight is really important. Because you're starting to learn the technique, you're starting to learn where your body needs to be during that squat so that as you start to progressive overload it you're going to be able to stay safe in that exercise. So if you're working out at home for the next little while, a great investment to make if you don't have any equipment at home, would be starting with some dumbbells and incorporating some lifting into your routine.

First Steps  22:11 

And at first, you don't really necessarily even need to worry about progressive overload, we can just get you started just just lifting. And that's a first great first step for a lot of women. And then from there, we can start to track your weights, track your reps, track your sets, and make sure that those are going up over time. Now one of the people asked me, How do I track it, you can just print out a piece of paper if you want to print out a piece paper and just kind of track it. I like to have a electronic way to track it. And so I have used and recommend the app called Strong. It used to be a one time payment, but I'm pretty sure now it's a subscription that you have to pay monthly. But I did like having access to something like that where I could track it electronically. There are probably other apps that you can use that may be cheaper or Free. But I don't currently have, I don't currently know any of those. I don't use them anymore. And so I'm not quite familiar with apps that you can use to track but I'm sure you can do a quick Google search and find a way to electronically track it. But what you want is just to be able to track how many reps are doing, how many sets you're doing at what weight so that you can look at that over time and make sure that you are progressively overloading.

Rest and Recovery  23:25  

So as you're setting up your training schedule, it's also important to understand that there is that rest and recovery part of the cycle. So again, we stress the body it then recovers from the stress and causes an adaptation to happen so that when you go back into the gym, you are a little bit stronger than you were last time. This works really well until you stress the body beyond what it is able to recover from. And so if you are lifting very frequently, if you are not giving your body, the sleep and the calories and the rest that it needs in order to recover. This is when you Get into overtraining. So what overtraining is, is that you are stressing the body, you are not giving it adequate time to recover. And so that adaptation doesn't occur and what you actually start and then you get back into the gym and you stress the body again. And what actually starts to occur is you start to actually detrain, you actually start to get weaker, because that adaptation part of the cycle isn't occurring, you're not allowing the rest of the recovery that you need in order to adapt to the weight. And so overtraining is when that adaptation is not allowed to happen, or you can't it doesn't happen and you start to actually get weaker and you feel more fatigued, like getting to the gym is really hard, like the weight feels very heavy. Those are signs of overtraining. And people like to like kind of quantify like, how much is too much. And it's really important understand that this is a very individualized thing. I cannot make a general recommendation in how much is too much in terms of how much stress you're able to place on your body, someone who is more of a more an athlete and has has been training for longer is able to, to tolerate and recover from higher amounts of stress than someone likely who is just starting out, someone who is eating more calories is going to be able to recover better from the stress, someone who's getting more sleep is going to be able to recover from the stress.

Stress  25:13 

Because you have to understand that when I say stress, yeah, we're talking about the weight that you're lifting. But stress is stress, like stress on your body is stress. And so if you have stress on your body from lifting, plus you have, you know, stress because of the economy, and you also have stress because of your marriage, and you're also not eating at a time and you're not, you know, sleeping enough. Those are all added amounts of stress that your body has to, you know, recover from in order to adapt. And so if we are not, you'll not only have to be looking to the stress that you experience in the gym, but also the other elements of stress in your life. And that's why increasing your calories can be very beneficial. It's less stressful on your body. That's why getting extra sleep or more sleep can be very beneficial because you're allowing your body to rest and recover. So what I would advise you as you're stepping in and making sure your progressive overloading you knew you're training towards a specific goal that you were just paying attention. You're paying attention to your body, how it feels you're paying attention to when you come back, or do you feel like you've recovered, right? If you have a heavy squat day, the next time you go in heavy squat? Do you feel like you've been able to recover like, Are you back up and ready to do it again. And if you're not, then that may be a sign that we need to pull back a little bit in terms of the frequency in which you're lifting, or the intensity in which you're lifting to allow your body that time to rest and recover. Now, typically, you do not want to lift the same muscle groups two days in a row, you will want to give at least a day of rest in between. And that is why you will often see people talk about their split.

Splits  26:54  

And when we're talking about a split, we're just talking about what muscle groups you're working on, on what day and so if you're doing this, something like a five day split, you may have a day where you're doing back and biceps. And then the next day, you're lifting but you're not lifting with your back and biceps, you're lifting with your chest and triceps, because you're allowing those back and biceps to recover. And then the next day, maybe you're doing legs, and that is still allowing the back and biceps and the chest and triceps to recover. And then the maybe the next day you're doing you know shoulders and abs. And so when you split up the muscle groups, you're able to work a muscle group out, allow it to recover before then you come back and stimulate it again. And that's the purpose of doing a split. Now with someone who's just starting out, I really highly recommend starting out with a very basic split. So you can start out with something like an upper lower split, where you do upper body one day, you know lower body two days later and then upper body two days later and then lower body two days later. So you're doing just like a alternating back between upper and lower split or doing something like a push pull legs. So you're doing Push exercises one day, which is going to be more chest and triceps. You're doing pull exercises and other day, which is going to be more back and biceps, and you're doing legs another day. And so you're cycling through those. And again, you're allowing your body that time that it needs in order to recover because we can't recover from it, you aren't actually going to get stronger.

Now, there is so much more that I could talk about of how to figure out what exercises to do, what days how to make sure you're putting together a training block where you're progressively training over, progressively overload during that training period of time, how to change up your exercises, when to change up your exercises, how to know what your jumps should be with your weight, there's a lot more that I could cover. And in order to put together your own training program, which is what I'm all about, I'm all about not necessarily just giving you a training program, but how can you do to understand why programs are set up a certain way and allowing you to be able to create your own training plan. Based on your goals and an understanding of how to put that together, and so, being able to add muscle to your body or being able to add strength to your body, you have to understand these principles and you have to understand this process. And you have to understand how to, to apply it to you, and your your body.

Building Muscle  29:17  

And we all know and I don't have to tell you that lifting weights is the only way to build muscle. And building muscle is the only way to speed up your metabolism. And to get that toned look that everybody wants. That comes from building muscle. And with building muscle, you are able to accelerate fat loss because muscle requires more calories than fat at rest, which means that you're getting faster results in your weight loss journey while you're eating more food. Like, can I get an amen? That's like the goal, right, is to be able to have faster results while eating more food. And I don't have to tell you that there is some like empowerment that comes from just feeling strong from feeling like you're able to do the things in life that is required of you. And I will say that there is such a mental shift that comes from focusing on how much weight you're lifting rather than how much weight you're losing. And when we start to focus on what our bodies can do and how strong our bodies are, we inevitably have that weight loss kind of come alongside of it, but it's it stops being the focus, and you start to focus on how amazing your body is  and what it can do.

Build Your Workouts  30:31

And I understand that like there's just a lot of women who even understanding that are just really unsure about how to get started lifting weights. And so I'm hopeful that some of the basic information that I gave today will allow you, whether or not you're just wanting to just move your body and feel good and have some of that stress relief, or whether you're wanting to actually get stronger and progressive overload at home during this time that we're seeing. You know, a lot of us are staying out of the gym, then I wanted to be able to give you some of that information to be able to help you with that. If you're interested in more and if you want to understand more, and if you want to be able to take this idea of progressive overload and then actually start to apply it to to creating a program for you. This is exactly why I have a program that I created called Build Your Workouts. And this is a program where I walk you through the process of creating your own customized workout plan so that you can follow a plan that is going to allow you to accelerate your muscle building and it's going to help you to accelerate your fat loss. And because of everything that's going on, I wanted to run a short sale on this and so I wanted to give $30 off to those of you who are listening to this. So if you go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/workout, and you use the coupon code ATHOME, all all uppercase, no space, so the coupon code is ATHOME. Then you'll save $30 off of that program. And in addition, for just the next week, I'm throwing in an extra bonus. So in addition to getting the program that is going to help you to set up your customized plan, you're also going to get a six week workout plan that you can just follow. And so you'll have the best of both worlds, you'll have the knowledge and the ability to be able to create your own plan, including a plug and play template that makes it really easy to set up what your split should be, and how to know which exercises to plug in. And in addition to that, you'll also have a six week plan that you can just use and follow and all you need for that is just dumbbells. So if you have access to dumbbells at home, then you can follow that six week plan and know that you are progressively overloading and that you are getting stronger and that you're actually building the muscle and you're not necessarily just spinning your wheels wasting time because you have made sure that those parts are a part of the program. So you kind of get the best of both worlds you get build your workouts, the program to help you to be able to customize and create your own workout. out. And then just for the next week, I'm adding that bonus on of a six week plan that you can just follow in addition so that you can just get started right away. And you can know that you are actually building the muscle, you're actually spending time and like you're getting a return you're building muscle because of the time that you're spending, lifting those weights. And again, if you use the coupon code ATHOME, now this coupon code will only be available for the next week, so until March 24. After that the coupon code will be expired. So if you are listening to this after March 24, the coupon code will not be active. But if you are listening to this before, then you can go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/workout and you can use that coupon code at home and you can save $30 and get that extra bonus of the six week workout plan.

Recap  33:48  

And now just to kind of recap and wrap this up. I know that there's gonna be a lot of stuff going on in the world. I know that you probably have a lot of things going on in your own life. Whether you're worried about finances or you're worried about health or you're worried about your parents or somebody that you love that maybe is in a more vulnerable part of the population. And I just want to say that this is a time to be gentle with yourself. This is a time to keep setting goals. But I set those goals according to what matters to you, and according to what your values are. And I'm going to go back to what I said at the very beginning, that I talked about progressive overload. And they talked about workouts and I talked about, you know, continuing to set goals, but that needs to be in alignment with what your highest values are. And your values may be shifting right now during this time. And that is, okay. The most important thing is that you're being intentional with it, and you are creating the life that you want. Even during this time of uncertainty, even during this time of maybe a little bit of fear. And even during this time when things are changing, and we we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. I think that's where some of the fear happens is that we just we just don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. And so I'm just gonna encourage you Be very gentle with yourself and take it a day at a time and to listen to your body. Listen to how it's feeling and and what's going on. And be gentle with what you're requiring of yourself at this time.

What is Most Helpful?  35:15  

And last, I am curious of what is would be most helpful to you. I am always open to receiving feedback, what you want to hear about what you want to learn about on the podcast. And especially at this time where there are probably some unique needs and some unique questions. I would love to be able to hear from you of what your what you're wanting more of right now during this time. And so if you have something that you'd like to share, or you'd like to give an idea for the podcast, you can just email us at support at biceps after babies calm and let us know what you're thinking. Let us know what your you're feeling and what you would like to hear. We have some awesome guests lined up for the next little while and I have some solo episodes that I've recorded that I'm excited to be able to have you here. But we'd also love To hear and see what it is that you really need right now and and how biceps after babies can support you through some of this uncertainty and through some of this time and some of these different experiences than than you've ever experienced before. So that's what I wanted to say about that. And the last thing that I will say is that I hope that you can be mindful of others around you. And that this pulls us together as a community rather than separating us I think it's really easy to get into fight or flight mode, and to pay attention only to your needs and to think only about your future. And the more that we as a community can be aware of other people and and doing things for other people and being kind to other people and thinking of other people when you're at the store, purchasing things that you hopefully just need and that you're not over, over stocking up. Then we're going to be able to pull together as a community and we are going to be able to get through this there is going to be an end and hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later.

You Have Control  36:58 

But if it's not, I think want you to know that you are powerful and that you have control over certain things in your life, you don't have control over coronavirus, you don't have control over the stock market, you don't have a control over so many things that are occurring right now. And I think it can make a lot of people feel out of control. But there are still so many things that you do have control over you have control over where you, you know, what you choose to do during your day you have control over how you are enjoying this time with your kids or your spouse, or you have control over how you treat other people and how you think about other people. And when we can start to feel empowered by the things that we are able to control in this time of uncertainty and we focus on those things, just the things that are actually within your control that we can get out of this fear spiral. Because when we start to focus on things we can't control, and we feel those emotions that we think those thoughts and we feel those fears. It tends to be in a spiral and you turn into this victim because you are not able to control what the stock market does, you're not able to control how it works. some extent you're able to control you know the spread of the virus because you can take your part. But there's a lot of things with Corona virus that you're not able to control. And when we focus our attention on things that are outside of our control, it turns you into a victim. And you can choose to go into victim mentality. I personally believe that victim mentality doesn't ever serve me. And so when I feel that fear, when I feel that out of control, I choose to go into focusing on the things that are within my control. And that helps me to let go of some of that fear that's not serving me and to be able to turn to things that actually can serve me and can serve my community and my family. And so that wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio, I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong, because remember, my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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