33- Winning in the Ranges: A Flexible Fitness Approach for the Unpredictable Life of a Mom

In this episode of Miles from Her View, host Kat, a seasoned strength and conditioning coach, discusses women's challenges in maintaining a fitness routine despite their busy lives. She addresses common barriers, offers mindset shifts, and provides practical tips for creating a sustainable fitness plan. Kat also shares her insights on holistic programming, emphasizing flexibility over perfection and the importance of consistency. The discussion includes actionable steps for simplifying one's approach to fitness, managing mental loads, and celebrating small victories.
 


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00:00 Introduction: Overcoming Fitness Barriers

00:45 Welcome to the Podcast

01:30 Balancing Fitness with a Busy Life

02:50 Designing the Perfect Program

07:27 Dealing with Mental Load

19:17 Building Resilience and Adaptability

25:14 Actionable Tips for Simplifying Your Approach

29:19 Strength Ahead: A Membership for Busy Women

32:11 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

Kat: 0:00

Does sticking to a fitness plan feel impossible sometimes, like you're failing because you can't juggle strength training, cardio, mobility, and nutrition all at once? And let's just add in life, that whole thing that you do outside of it. Well, today we're going to go over some ways to overcome some common barriers, help with some mindset shifts, and some tips to provide you with a more sustainable approach. These are approaches that I use in my everyday life as well as I help coach my clients through. So tune in and if possible, grab the book. Welcome to miles from her view, the podcast, where we dive deep into the unfiltered reality of fitness, strength training, and nutrition within womanhood and motherhood. I am your host, Kat, founder of Kat, the strength, I'm a career strength and conditioning coach, entrepreneur, lifelong athlete, and a mom of two active boys in each episode, we explore the unique challenges and triumphs faced by women. Navigating the complexities of life from juggling family and career to prioritizing self care. We dissect the systems and the habits that shape our health and wellness. Join us for real stories, authentic advice, and genuine conversations as we empower each other to embrace our journeys and find strength and vulnerability. Welcome. I'm so happy to have you here. And this is something that I hear from a lot of people. It is so hard to pay attention to my own fitness routine in the whole scheme of life. Like, how do you adhere to a fitness program, a workout program in everyday life? It's busy. You know, I'm in the season of life where I have grade school kids. They're involved in sport. I'm running a business And combined with trying to keep up with my own well being It is something that all my clients deal with our situations in 24 hours a day all look different But there's a lot of commonalities. So today we're gonna go over what quote unquote the perfect program might look like The mental load that comes with life. I won't be able to articulate everybody's mental load. We are all unique. But I'm going to address the commonalities there. Why it's actually harder to do everything at once. And the ways we can overcome that. And then I'm going to talk about the struggle. But I want to leave you with some really great actionable tips that you can apply today and going into 2025. Alright, so let's dive in. The perfect program. There's a lot of pressure around this. Am I doing things right? Is this what I'm supposed to do? Am I seeing the progress as to where I'm at? What do we do? And if you tune into any social media, or you talk to your close friends and family, and you just hear, everyone is going to have a different spin on, what should you do? So, for me, when I work with clients, I look at putting together a whole program. What that means is there is a strength training part and I focus on progressive strength training I have done an episode on that. I cannot recall which number it is, but I will put that in the show notes Cardio, that doesn't mean running, but anything where you're moving your body, either at a steady state or some sort of interval, mobility slash stretching, mobility, working on creating more range of motion, more fluidity with the joints. It can also incorporate some yoga Pilates in there with that mobility and then nutrition. So they all work together. Outside of that kind of goes with stress reduction, sleep and those things, but really focused on the things that I built in for my clients so that they see a whole program. They know all these areas are getting addressed the unrealistic expectation that comes with perfection seeking. Tendency is this all or nothing approach and this is where that perfect program pressure tends to fall into place. Is if I can't do all of it, I will do nothing or we feel crippled by the fact that we're not sure what we're supposed to do. So our inaction creeps up. So we think, Oh, when I get motivated again, I'll do it. And that's where that motivation comes in. But I want to stay on track here is you're busy. Whatever your 24 hours looks like, you have limited time. Guilt creeps in when we skip workouts because we think, and I know I, I'm going to kind of put words in your mouth here or thoughts in your head is that missing a workout is going to deteriorate our program or slow our progress when that is not the case in a program. You will miss. I plan for this for my clients. This is something that we talk about is when you start a program, there are going to be missed workouts. So we want to make sure that we're adjusting our expectations and knowing that we are going to work with them. My programs and the programs are the program adherence that I do with my clients is not looking for them to do every single workout. I write them so that there is flexibility in there. So, I want you to think about right now, we are in the midst of the holiday season right now. There's a lot of extra things that creep up. There's social gatherings, there's family gatherings, there's, you know, it's quarter four. It's the end of the business year right now. So, a lot of projects are being tied finished up a lot of extra gatherings, a lot of extra to do's on the list for the holidays that are with my clients right now. We are looking at what do we have the capacity for? Are we scaling back or are we able to push forward? And within that whole program stance, it's maybe this week we're focused on mobility and sleep and nutrition. That may look like for some clients, some clients maybe, okay, I really strength is what is going to, I have the capacity for it's what's going to nourish my soul, what I want to do. So we focus on that. It does not mean that's the only thing. From here on out, they're going to focus on, but that plan is when they're getting through the tough season that they're able to focus on that and know that they're still able to adhere because there's that flexibility there. They will add in the mobility, you know, there's the warmup process. So they are getting a touch of mobility, stretching, etcetera there. and movement. If they can't get out for a traditional cardio workout, whatever movement that looks like, I'm encouraging them to gain that movement throughout the day versus sitting at your desk for eight hours a day without moving. All right, now let's go into that mental load. So this part is tough. It's going to look different for every person, but there are some commonalities So oftentimes I find with clients and Even myself, when I start a program is this fear of failure or not being enough, where when you started and things start to get a little tough, where life gets lifey and starts to throw curveballs, the mind will quickly go to that negative of, I'm failing again. I'm not enough. You know, this negative, Self talk creeps in. Why bother if I can't be perfect? Here I go again. You know, I'm repeating the same things. Whatever. Think back to those times where those, that self talk creeps in, think back to those fears, those doubts that come in. And then another one is that comparison may happen in this order. It may happen in a different order in, in your life. mind, but that, that comparison creeps in. You might see a social media account where it looks like every single day they're showing up. You might see a friend or, you know, whatever, whoever on their social media, and it looks different compared to reality. The reality is, is there's no, nobody follows a perfect plan. And even if you did follow a perfect plan, And you never had your plan altered, it doesn't mean you're going to see the exact results you thought. We want to make sure that we're not comparing yourself to someone else's reality. So I mentioned at the beginning of the episode is everyone has a different 24 hours. I don't have the same 24 hours as my clients, none of my clients have the same 24 hours. They all have a common goal. They want to build strength. They want to be consistent with their whole program. They want to have more. They want to care about their, they do care, and they want to keep their well being a priority in a very busy life. Those things are commonalities. Their 24 hours look totally different. I have some clients in different seasons of life. Some clients are still building their families. So they're in that very early postpartum and, or prenatal period. Some clients have young children. Some clients have elementary school age children. Some clients have middle to high school. Some clients have college age students. There's a vast array of seasons that these clients find themselves in each area. may have some commonalities, but it's going to look different. There's going to be different emotional and different mental barriers. There's going to be different timing and different scheduling barriers, but that's where I work with helping the clients shift and adapt their workouts so that they can get through those times of busyness, times of friction, and be able to do a whole program. So mental load does affect action. You will, and this is tough, I say this as someone who has also had to learn this, not from a pedestal looking down and preaching, dare I say, to you who may be struggling with this, but from someone who still does struggle with this, but has overcome this, is prioritizing your own self over others needs. It's tough, but it is necessary to take action to keep your wellbeing a priority. It's tough. Oftentimes it feels more comfortable to put others needs before yours, then delaying your own focus or prioritization of your wellbeing. When I say this, I mean it. And I just want to keep it with clarity here is yes, there are times you're gonna have to prioritize others needs over your own. And that's part of being adaptable. But and I'll give myself or use myself as an example. When my kids were little, I would always put their needs ahead. I would talk myself out of workouts. because my kids needed me more. Or if I saw a lot of clients in one day and my kids were now home, I would tell myself this story. It's maybe I wouldn't use this word, but selfish of me to take more time versus spending the time with my kids. I would prioritize the cleanliness of the house after the kids went to bed and making sure the kitchen was cleaned up versus going to work out. And it wasn't until I, metaphorically speaking, put my foot down and started prioritizing my own well being, scheduling in time stating, this is a time I need to work out. That's tough. Now the second thing, like the mental load with a whole fitness programming, a whole programming for your wellbeing is the decision decision to fatigue. That's a tongue twister decision fatigue. When you're sitting there thinking like, well, what do I need to do today? Well, what lifts do I need to do in a strength training workout? Is this going to work? I really want to target this. Is this doing this cardio? What should I do for cardio? So, and so on. Social media said, don't do this cardio, but is that this cardio training should I do here? It adds in those choices that leads you to do nothing. So it creates this decision fatigue when you're already fatigued, making so many other decisions for your profession, your everyday life, that it causes the inaction there. So again, it's not motivation. It's when we have all these decisions that we need to make that creates more of a mental load. And it's, well, this is exhausting. It's too much. I'm not going to do it. Why? It's actually harder to do everything at once when clients come in. And I know I'm kind of utilizing this from like how I coach clients to, from my program formation. And this is, you know, it's, it's, Backed by even, you know, I have almost two decades of experience training from athletes all the way to everyday individuals looking to prioritize their health. And even when you have athletes, and I coached college track and field, and their job was to be student and an athlete, student first, athlete second, it was, if I threw everything at them all at once, despite. They had two jobs, essentially, we're going to boil it down to that. They were on a college campus, they had a ribbon board. My athletes did hold a job on campus, but for the most part, they were not working a 9 5. Their essential 9 5 was a student. You know, think back to those days, think back to the time where your only responsibility was yourself. So if I threw everything they needed to know to get the best performance at them on day one, it would be a disaster. So the, so training my clients was in this format of building them up. It's the same thing that I do with my clients. I don't throw everything at them all at once. Like, okay, here is your whole program, boom. And also from a coaching standpoint, the expectation that they will execute it, quote unquote, perfectly. It's I start with breaking it down to meet them where they're at. So. From a benefit standpoint, ideally I would love my clients to consistently do two to three strength training workouts per week. Well, a client may not have the capacity to do that. That's a hundred percent. Okay. So what I do is we start with one strength training workout. We focus on, maybe, you know, I have to understand their capacity. What does their schedule look like? What can they mentally, physically, timing wise take on? I ask clients where they see themselves, what they want to do, what they have the capacity to, and we work in ranges. We focus on one change at a time that builds those sustainable habits, those repeatable systems, so that it supports your well being. And this is the, the importance of this consistency over intensity. I have clients that come in and they're like, I want to do five workouts every single week. The reality is they will have the capacity. But currently their timing and the capacity isn't there. It does not mean that they can't. It fully means they can, but we need to meet and not focus on that intensity of starting out at five, where that can lead to a quick failure and frustration. And inflating more of that guilt and doubt versus focusing on one to two workouts or maybe two to three. Again, it gets down to where are they at? And that's why I like to know where clients are. And I ask them questions to see, to put workouts on days that will set them up for success, to schedule mobility or that yoga on days where they need that decompression. The second part. everything at once is the physiological aspects. If we're trying to improve strength, endurance, mobility, and nutrition simultaneously, that leads to burnout and plateaus. It can also cause too much, not making your body feel good, too much soreness, too much, just everything where your body isn't recovering. So it is true. Oftentimes my clients are not getting great sleep. They're not Maybe they have young children and their children are not sleeping through the night currently Well, I wouldn't put intense workouts or you know, I wouldn't put an intense workout that I would assign to a client who is An empty nester where they are getting great sleep or and I'll flip this too. I would not Assign an intense workout for a woman whose kids are college and she might be in perimenopause menopause I would look at it as like, okay Where are you at that season and how do we meet your body where it's at so that you are able to recover and rest From those different workouts so you are getting the maximum benefits Clients who are in that mid range where their kids are sleeping well. And they're, I'll take my kids, they're 10 and 13. Well, you're in the car a lot. I play a lot of mom taxi. There's a lot of sports, a lot of music lessons, a just a lot of socialization with their friends. Well, they're socializing with their friends. They're not driving yet. So the driving falls to me and to my husband. So. There's a different kind of busyness and so their workouts are going to look different. And I've had clients with younger children who may be toddlers and younger that they sleep great. Cool. Well, we can adjust the intensity there, but focusing on it's that consistency over intensity and that we are getting that rest and recovery so that the body can create these adaptations to build on strength, endurance, mobility, and. having that solid nutrition. We're going to reframe the struggle here. We're going to kind of focus on that. And this is one of my favorite areas. And when clients start to learn this, there becomes this beautiful cohesiveness with their workouts. I see kind of that aha moment and I love it. This is where I feel the magic happens that they are starting to set themselves up. for a great healthy relationship with their wellbeing, with their fitness program. So you want to build resilience through adaptability. One of the things I pride myself on when I build workouts is creating timing options. I stress with clients, we are going to work in ranges from set ranges, rep ranges to workout ranges. We're all about the range here because you are not going to be the same person every single day. You're not going to have the same energy levels every single day. There are a myriad of factors that go into you. When we focus on that adaptability and meeting yourself where you're at, that's where the magic happens. So I stress missing a workout is not a failure. It's part of the process. I have missed, I can't even count how many workouts I've missed. You know, In this last training block for my last ultra marathon, I missed workouts. I didn't finish workouts. I left miles on the table. You know, that's all part of the plan. None of that set me up for failure. I was still completely set up for success to complete my race. So with my clients, I try to get them used to celebrating completing unfinished workouts. Sets and reps left on the table. It is a fact of a workout. When I trained clients in college, sometimes I needed to call the workout for an athlete because that was going to set them up for success. Sometimes I needed to adjust workouts for certain athletes because that's where they were that day because each person is an individual, not nobody's a robot. So when we look at the workout, what the knee, what your needs are and understanding the adaptability and learning to adjust the workouts and meals. It's a skill and not a setback. That's where the magic happens. That's where the guilt and shame gets stripped away and the resilience is built. You may see this everywhere. And this is the one thing where everyone's like celebrate the small wins, but what does that really mean? And the small wins. Focus on leaving sets of reps on the table. That's huge knowing. And I love it. I love it. When clients message me and say, Hey, I have a workout today. Life is a little crazy. I'm going to bump it tomorrow, but I really feel like I need some mobility. That is phenomenal. I love it. You're still prioritizing your whole wellbeing, you know, and you're meeting yourself where you're at. Fantastic. That's what I want to see. That's true well being. That's completing a whole program. It's none of this, if you aren't showing up and going at, I don't know, a level 10, you know, never, never skip a day, never, you know, I don't know. Think of all those silly mantras that, you know, people say out there. That's, that's not realistic. When you look at the small efforts, when you acknowledge. That, that is going to keep you coming back and showing up. When you say, Hey, you know what, I don't have 40 minutes today, but I have 10 minutes. So I'm going to do, you know, two sets of the first exercise. You showed up, you showed up and committed. If you say, Hey, I'm really exhausted. I do not have the capacity to do a workout today. The best thing for me to do is to sleep. Go to bed early to de stress to whatever address your needs so you can show up better tomorrow. Not just to work out, but you can be as a whole better tomorrow. That is H. E. A. P. I have clients who we are working and I'm helping them reframe. Like I said, at the time of recording this, this is H. We're in the height of December. There are a lot of extra things happening. So we're seeing and feeling all of life's curveballs, but we're not letting them stop us. We're focusing on the small wins and the consistent efforts that we're making. And we're celebrating that. We're celebrating that these small wins are going to build to something bigger. and are building to something bigger. And I have seen so, so, so many wins from my clients. And the cool thing is when they're like, yeah, a year ago, I went do this, or the last time I was in a tough spot, I would be able, I would quit my program, be frustrated and take me four to five months to get back to it. So this is where the small wins matter, this acknowledgement of I'm making a consistent effort here. And when I mentioned that all or nothing aspect in the beginning is, this is where the all or nothing Thought prevails is where life's throwing me all these curveballs. I can't make my XYZ workout I had lined up today and this whole week is a mess. So throw out the program and you put yourself in this dead stop with it versus adapting to build that resilience. All right, let's finish off with some actionable tips here. I really want you to focus on simplifying your approach. So if you are frustrated right now with a whole workout program, are you just not sure where to begin or you're looking at putting together your plan for 2025. And that's okay. If right now you're like, I cannot even handle thinking about my wellbeing right now because life is just massively lifing. That's okay. That is totally fine. There are going to be periods in your time periods in your life, excuse me, where you are going to have to pause, but create that start date. And when you do. Utilize it. Simplify your approach. Focus on one pillar at a time. Maybe the easiest thing for you to start with is strength. Start with two workouts a week or one to two workouts. Let's keep it in that prep range. Start with one to two workouts a week. If you want to start with cardio and you don't know where to start, start with walking. Walking is one of the most underrated forms of cardio. Check it out. It does not have to be this all out. I'm going to walk 30 minutes a day. No, start with one to two walks per week, five to 10 minutes or one to three minutes or start being active with your kids. Get out in the yard, throw on a jacket, layer up, get out in the cool weather. I don't always like the cold weather, but I get myself out there. Nutrition. Okay. You do not need to clean out your whole pantry, throw everything away and never, ever, ever see a processed food in your life again. Just add a protein plant based or animal based. Add an extra cup of water a day. Add one more vegetable. Doesn't mean all of these things you have to add. Just add one thing. You don't need to overhaul your diet. Simplify. It's consistency over perfection. Okay, time management. I don't know everyone's 24 hours and I will always stress this. Your 24 hours does not look like my 24 hours and that's fine. So look at your schedule. Maybe right now you have, your schedule can only accommodate 10 minute workouts. Brilliant. Do 10 minute workouts until you can accommodate more. That is something that is showing up. Pair fitness with existing habits. This is huge. One of the things I do at the end of the night, because life gets a little crazy and I don't always have time to do some mobility. I'll do some mobility while I'm watching TV. Do some mobility while I'm working on my client check ins. And one of the biggest things, and this is where it stops people, is some of the mindset. Not every workout has to be perfect to count. I argue some of the best workouts and the ones that are going to build a strong foundation are the ones that are the two minute workouts, the ones where you leave the sets and reps on the tables, the ones that you cut short, the ones you show up even when life gets crazy. Those are the ones that build the strongest foundation and celebrate all. Progress. Celebrate laying your clothes out. Celebrate opting for a glass of water over whatever else. Celebrate every single thing you do because that is progress. We are not looking for perfection. I will keep saying that. Celebrate all progress because that is huge. All right, I threw a lot at you. I hope this helps. I hope you were able to jot down some things. Relisten, send a message to the podcast. You can click on it, send a message. That would be amazing. And as we get closer to 2025, reflect on your own fitness goals. See where you can simplify. See where maybe just one small change can make a huge impact. And I'd love, I'd love to hear your stories. I'd love to. Hear from you so you can tag me at miles from her view on IG or at Cat Fit Strength on ig. You can message me on those two profiles. I'm pretty active on there. And then I also wanted to share with you before I wrap up this whole episode is there's something that I'm bringing back kind of from the Vault of Catfish strength eons ago, but I'm re. And I'm super excited. If you're on my email list, you already know. So, get on my email list because I drop the insights there. It's not going to be seen on Instagram. So, Awesome. You're listening and I'll talk about it a little bit more on the podcast, but it was dropped on in my weekly newsletter. So if you're not subscribed, get on there, it'll be in the show notes, strength ahead. It's a membership based community designed for busy women, ready to create that lasting change through strength training. And. It's not about quick fixes. There is no quick fixes here. That is not what I do, but it's designed for someone. If you've been working out and feeling like I'm just missing something, it's okay. You know, if questions pop into your head, like, am I lifting the right way? How do I know if I'm challenging myself enough or are these exercises actually building muscle? Well, this is what Strength Ahead does. It takes the guesswork out. it alleviates that mental fatigue. So strength training isn't just about building muscle. It's also about stepping into that confidence and creating the energy and resilience and strength to live life on your terms for your, for yourself, primarily your family, your career, and all those big dreams that you have. So this membership is going to give you progressive strength, workouts, cardio, and mobility resources. There's going to be a weekly live group coaching call. And a amazing community to support yourself. It is all online. It is housed in the Cafe Strength app, which you'll have your own separate profile there. You can adjust the workouts to the days you want. There's no falling behind with anything. There's no guilt or shaming. The timing options are there in the workouts, and you can do the training at home or in the gym. I also will have equipment recommendations for home. You don't need a commercialized gym to do this. It's very flexible, sustainable, and you build it to fit your life. So the doors are going to open soon, but the program starts on January 6th. 2025. So don't miss your chance to prioritize yourself and create the lasting strength you deserve. All right. If you want to learn more about this, this is the show notes to sign up on the waiting list because there's going to be some pretty awesome bonuses that you will have access to, but you need to be on the wait list to get those. So if you've enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a review, share it with someone. This not only supports the show, but it helps. Other busy women like you find this podcast. And also it is one of the greatest things you could give me for tuning in. And I truly, truly appreciate you for taking time out of your day to listen. And I can't wait to be back here with you for another episode. So let's keep moving forward and getting stronger together.