Cardio alone isn’t the answer to midlife belly fat.
What truly creates meaningful change is progressive strength training — not random workouts, but intentional, structured movement designed to make you stronger over time.
Strength training builds muscle, stability, and resilience.
It enhances flexibility, protects ligaments and tendons, and is the single most effective way to preserve bone density through menopause.
The goal isn’t exhaustion — it’s adaptation.
Here’s the mindset shift:
We need intentional stress — the kind that challenges us safely and consistently.
Not the chronic stress that drains us, but the kind we control — the kind that builds strength, confidence, and emotional resilience.
💡 The key is:
1️⃣ Training with purpose, not randomness.
2️⃣ Progressing gradually and strategically.
3️⃣ Using smart variations — tempo, range, and resistance — to keep the body adapting without injury.
In upcoming posts, I’ll share how these principles — along with nutrition, impact training, and recovery — come together to help women thrive through menopause.
Stay tuned — the details are coming soon.
Flex and Flow Playa Washington DC
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Empowering you to find more freedom, durability, strength, and resilience thru movement and nutrition
06/05/2024
Thank you to Dr. Anjali Dsouza from District Center for Integrative Medicine for inviting me to speak this past Monday. I presented a mini master class on the power of strength training in reducing symptoms of menopause.
Dr Dsouza is at the forefront of changing the story on menopause. We need not feel like we are powerless, aging, withering women as we enter perimenopause or menopause. We have tools and support to thrive as we enter this natural phase of life.
Be on the lookout for more content around this very important topic, and an upcoming 3 month program to help you navigate how to safely and effectively strength train and eat to optimize and thrive! This program will be available remotely (for my clients and friends not in the D.C. area) and in person!
NOT SEEING RESULTS?
If you are training multiple times a week, but never seem to notice any change beyond the initial 6 weeks (beginner gains)it may be time to take a closer look at the stimulus.
Progressive overload is the concept that the body won’t continue adapting (getting stronger, getting more mobile, getting leaner) unless you are perpetually modifying the input to stimulate the change.
If you have been doing push-ups from your knees since middle school, do you think your push-ups will ever get better? It’s time to do the first several of your set of 12 on your toes.
Have you been saying you want to do pull-ups but continuously do ring rows that never get easier? It’s time to get after banded pull-ups.
Do you squat with 10 or 15 # dumbbells and look like you are practically jumping from how fast you are able to move? It’s time to either spend more time under tension or up the weights. Maybe you move to working on single leg versions with the same weight.
Try something harder. If you drive yourself to the gym, pay for a membership, or participate in classes and never choose to challenge yourself, do you really expect a shift?
If you understand the concept but don’t know how to effectively make the change to your programming, ask me! 🙋🏽♀️
Whether you live in DC or outside of the area, I can either create a new training plan or modify the one you are using to help you finally get those gains!
11/09/2023
WOW for this week is up on my YouTube channel. Link to my YouTube channel in comments.
Please subscribe to my channel and save this video to try during your next workout.
Try 2-3 rounds 10 reps each for each movement.
1. sprawl
2. Kosack squat
3. Ground to overhead
4. Pike to plank/wall walk
5. Overhead lunge
6. Dips
7. Curls/ pull-ups
8. Foot anchored sit-ups
9. V up/toes 2 bar
Push-up variations
Whether you have great push-ups already, or you do them a lot but you don’t know where to go from version you know and do frequently, trying new versions can help you develop more global muscle around your shoulders, back, triceps and more. Varying how you do push-ups can also open up opportunities to progressing to other skills (planche, handstands and even acrobatics and band balancing)
Take a look at these variations starting from easiest to most challenging and choose a version that is different from what you program in your training.
Notice that it’s all about angles and geometry. When the feet are low, and the arms are high (wall push-up) very little weight is on your arms. As the progressions become more difficult, it makes sense that a handstand push-up would be the only end of the spectrum (feet up and hands low).
Try a new version of these and let me know how it goes.
You say you will, but do you?
Do you do the thing you said you’d do?
I see a variety of clients with different inclinations.
Some clients say I want to achieve xx. And they train xx constantly, almost to the exclusion of other really important things. They become obsessed and they try to anxiously do anything and everything they can to ensure it’s success. This state of unbalance can lead to a lack of sustainability. They starve themselves, they overtrain, they get injured from focusing on one thing too much.
Another set of clients says I want to achieve xx and shows up two times a week to train with me. They don’t do any homework, they don’t consider modifying their diet to assist in building the necessary muscle to achieve the movement. These folks act as if paying for two sessions is enough of a ‘payment’ to achieve the success. I am the guide, but you have to cover the miles.
How this may affect your self confidence is that your word may not mean much to you anymore. If keep saying, I want to squat my body weight, improve my bone density, or hold hand stand for 1 minute, but don’t show up and do the work to achieve it, you may start to tell yourself a story. Fitness is not for me. I am not strong enough. That was too hard a goal.
None of that is true. What is true is that time, and consistency spent on reasonable,achievable, well thought out goals, results in slow, steady progress, AND A BELIEF IN YOURSELF.
When you say you will do something - make a plan and execute it. Messy, not perfect, and slow is fine. Practice and all is coming.
If you need a guide, but you are ready to put in the work, message me to help you.
W.O.W Workout of the Week
Save this one and let me know how it goes! I will continue to load these workouts weekly here 📍but also to My YouTube channel (link to YouTube in comments) so that there will soon be months of home workouts to choose from. I will keep these sessions as low equipment needs to make the training more useful to more people.
2-3 rounds depending on time and fitness
A.1 💪🏽15 Hitch swing
A2. 💪🏽15 Kettlebell goblet squat
A3. 💪🏽15 Strict press to push press (when power is required to complete)
B1. 💪🏽15 Power cleans
B2. 💪🏽16 Renegade rows
B3. 💪🏽15 Chest fly
C1. 💪🏽12 Bent over reverse fly
C2. 💪🏽12 Around the world V-up
C3. 💪🏽12 Leap frog shuffle back
C4. 💪🏽12 Sumo squat curls
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