All Gain No Pain Personal Training

Seasonal Changes🌞 – And No, I’m Not Talking About the Weather⛈️

I’m talking about YOUR🫵 personal seasons. These are the seasons in which you working towards a specific goal, using a specific tool, or even just you loving a specific activity.🤸‍♂️ These things will all come and go, and it’s important to recognize when these things are no longer serving you.

Don’t be afraid to occasionally check what you’re doing, and make sure that its still serving you AND your future self!✨

Everyone has a stress tolerance or “stress cup.”🫗 A full stress cup is the maximum amount of stress that you can take, and this will vary for everyone. Paying attention and respecting the limits of the stress cup is where you’ll find progress. Let’s break down what this looks like, and how to increase your stress tolerance.📈

Say you wake up feeling refreshed, and you decide to go for a strength training workout. As amazing as strength training workouts are, these still count as stress getting added your stress cup. After your workout, you decide to go home, shower and eat a solid breakfast — refueling your body🍴. This will take some stress out of your stress cup because you need to fuel yourself. When we are skip meals or not putting fuel in our bodies, we automatically put stress on the body and add more to our stress cup. This means that if you’re in a phase of trying to lose fat or adding muscle without adding any fat, you are already under more stress than you would otherwise be, increasing how much is in your stress cup at any given time.🚰 This will make your cup pretty full from the start of your day, meaning we must be much more careful with what we put you through and how much stress we are adding to your already almost full stress cup.

If your stress cup is already pretty full, and we add three strength training workouts to your week, your stress cup will likely overfill and begin to spill out. This will have you struggling with the process, dealing with shame cycles, and feeling unsuccessful.😖 This is not where you want to be.
Instead, if we recognize that you are starting with a full stress cup, maybe we’d plan for you to do only one strength training workout that week, and add a couple days of walks for some intentional movement that isn’t driving your stress levels way up. Doing this will help increase your recoverability day by day, week by week, so that each day you are starting with more energy and increasing your overall tolerance for stress.🪫⚡

When our lives are full of exceedingly demanding stresses from many sources, 24 hours a day, it’s important that you can recover from the stresses you are putting yourself through. Make sure you are staying aware of where your stress levels are at, and not overfilling your cup. Stay dry!💧✨

Aches and Pains Accumulating in Your Joints💢😖

If you are starting to feel some aches and pains in your knees, elbows, or other joints; but you’ve been previously recovering well from your workouts, its often because your muscles get stronger faster than your joints and tendons.🏋️ To help your joints catch up give yourself a week or two, maybe three if you’ve been really pushing it, to recover from these workouts.

Recovering in this case doesn’t mean you need to stop strength training entirely. It just means you’re not trying to increase weights or do extra reps; you’re not trying to push anything. You will be repeating same workout as the week before🔁 and let that be a good enough amount for your muscles to continue progressing, while allowing your joints and tendons to catch up.

If that doesn’t seem to work after a couple of weeks, take a week off strength training. At the end of the day, as long as you’re recovering from your workouts, that’s your green light🟢 to keep training hard. Stay safe, and get after it!💪

Doing the Laundry👕✨

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by your new year resolutions and the things you’re putting on your plate, the reason might not be because you’re adding to much.🍽️ The reason may be because you haven’t been taking care of a few of the smaller things that need to be done, and the “laundry” is starting to add up.🧦🧦🧦

This means that your direct processing is required a lot for the things that happen to you throughout the day. You’re constantly unconsciously processing things in the background as they happen, but not everything can be processed this way. It’s important to spend a few conscious minutes on the things that happened to you across the day. Did someone cut you off while driving?🚘 Were you unable to get the latte you planned on grabbing?☕ Did you unexpectedly have to pick up a sick kid from school?🤒 These things add up over time and become “dirty laundry” in our brains.🧠 This dirty laundry can prevent you from being able to make another step towards your goals.

If just the idea of a workout a week or even peeking at your diet is really overwhelming, make sure that you’re spending a few minutes a day taking care of the dirty laundry.⌚ Some people use therapy or journaling for this✍️, but these can be intimidating ways to step into the arena with your dirty laundry. Try sitting in your car with the music off for a couple of minutes, taking a walk, or just sitting in a quiet room for a few minutes of each day.🧘 These small steps can make a huge difference, and will give you the emotional bandwidth to work towards your goals instead of being stuck in the executive dysfunction of “I don’t have energy, and I don’t know why.”

Do your laundry, and reach for those goals!👕🧦📈🫵

Are your New Year Resolutions working for you?📋⬇️

Now that we’re about 6-7 👀 weeks into the year, it’s time to make sure your New Year Resolutions are working for you.🗓️ By now, you’ve had some time to try out your resolutions, create some systems for success, and maybe make some changes along the way. When it comes to changing nutrition, adding movement, and improving health: the best way to tell if its working for you is by looking at your general energy.✨

When I say general energy, I’m not talking about your lowest days, or right when you wake up in the morning. General energy refers the amount of energy you have throughout a span of time, like a week. Do you have extra energy to see someone you haven’t seen in a while?🤳 Does happy hour or going out with your friends suddenly sound fun?🥂 These are just examples, but these are signs that you ARE improving your energy systems and moving the right direction!

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Remember, focusing on the little things means helping with the big things. Your goals should be working for YOU 🫵

Check Yourself, Before you Wreck Yourself: Flu Season Edition 🤧

The snow is here... and so is flu season!

This often means the “Should I work out today?” question hits harder than usual. The pressure to be consistent, particularly through the holidays, can often push people's health in the wrong direction.. 🤒

The key isn’t pushing through everything, but knowing what kind of consistency your body needs each day.

Here’s the rule of thumb I teach my clients. Upon waking, do a brief check in with yourself: How are you feeling?

💚 7–10/10? Train normally.
💛 5–6/10? Modify to a recovery day.
❤️ 1–4/10? Full rest + immune system support.

Remember, this isn’t a lack of discipline... quite the opposite. Its a system that supports your success by using awarness to meet you where you are. ✔️

This is training smarter than the average lifter!

A skipped/modified workout today can save you from a 7–14 day full-life setback.

Play the long game and listen to your body this flu season ✨️

⚖️ Using the Scale to track Fat Loss is like using a Screwdriver to Hammer a Nail.

🪛➡️🔨 Wrong tool for the job!

The scale can’t tell the difference between fat, water, food, or muscle — but your waist measurement can!

This holiday season, ditch the obsession with the number on the scale and use the right tool for the job. 📏

🎯 Measure your waist at the belly button upon waking once a week or at a regular interval that works for you!

You’ll get real data, not emotional chaos.

Pro Tip - If tracking is scary for you but you still want to track over time, ask a trusted person to do the measurement for you and keep the records in their phone notes. The information will be there when you’re ready for it ✨️

Measure your waist, this Holiday Season, not your worth 🩵

That brain fog? It’s not just you. ❄️😪

If you’ve been feeling unmotivated, groggy, or just off, you might be dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Just because our daylight is dimming doesn't mean your inner light should ✨️

💡 3 Steps that actually help:

1️⃣ Wake up + go to bed within 1 hour every day. Your sleep schedule controls your mood and energy more than you think 🔋

2️⃣ Make your bed. One minute, one win. It builds momentum for your entire day 👍

3️⃣ Get sunlight early. Step outside, roll down your car window, or do your morning routine near a bright window. Your brain needs that light cue to wake up and lift your mood. ☀️

Small habits = big relief.
Which one are you starting with? 🌻