S2, EP6: Finding your Fitnessing Flow: How to Use Exercise as a Tool for Healing and Well-being with Carl Champion
Nov 10, 2023
On Episode six of "The Crazy Ex-Wives Club," host Erica Bennett dives into the world of fitness as a means of supporting healing in the midst of life's challenges.
After experiencing the physical toll of divorce stress, Erica was determined to rebuild her physical self in a healthy way. To shed light on the topic, Erica brings in guest Carl Champion, a knowledgeable trainer from the Twin Cities.
Together, they explore the importance of finding balance between regular stress and exercise-induced stress, debunking myths about intense workouts and calorie burn.
From heart rate monitoring to finding the right coach and incorporating breathing techniques, Erica and Carl provide practical insights and valuable tips for leveraging workouts to support healing and overall well-being.
Tune in and join the conversation about finding your fitness flow on "The Crazy Ex-Wives Club"!
See below for full transcripts
Learn More About This Week’s Guest: Carl Champion
From humble beginnings in mid-Michigan, Carl found passion in fitness at a young age and has spent the last 15 years learnings, educating and coaching. He has coached everyone from teenagers to older populations that are new to exercise, up to competitive bodybuilders and powerlifters Carl believes that everyone is strong and unlocking strength potential through quality movement is key to leading a happy and healthy life.
The Crazy Ex-Wives Club Cohort - Your Personal Support Club
Are you looking for more support in your journey? You don't have to do it alone. Check out The Crazy Ex-Wives Club Cohort, a group coaching program to guide you through a 12 week transformation.
Finding your Fitnessing Flow: How to Use Exercise as a Tool for Healing and Well-being with Carl Champion Full Transcripts
Erica Bennett [00:00:04]:
Hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of the Crazy Ex-Wives Club. Super excited to talk to you this week all about fitnessing. How do you get back into the gym and do it in a way that helps support your energy repair versus depleting it even more? I have my guest Carl with me today. Excited to talk to you about all things rebuilding and replenishing when it comes to getting your body moving. Let's get started.
Erica Bennett [00:00:35]:
Welcome, Carl. Thanks for joining us. How are you doing today?
Carl Champion [00:00:40]:
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me.
Erica Bennett [00:00:43]:
Wonderful. So Carl is a trainer here in the Twin Cities. We met a couple of years ago during the great shutdown of 2020 when we were working out of a garage. It was a super fun experience to cross paths with some of the other trainers in the area that worked out of buildings that I wasn't at and I wanted to invite Carl on today because fitness was a large part of my healing journey. I didn't realize it at the time. I was just taking advantage of the fact that the stress of the divorce caused me to lose 30 pounds in 30 days.
Erica Bennett [00:01:19]:
Wasn't eaten, wasn't sleeping, adrenal glands were shot. And I thought, hey, let's not lose this, because losing 30 pounds is really hard. But maintaining it or building it back in a healthy manner would be really helpful. So it brought me to the gym, it brought me to starting to be aware of fitnessing and it started to show me that there was a lot of healing work that was happening while at the gym. Carl is here today to give you some tips to navigate that same journey. Because one of the biggest struggles I see is, especially for women, is that we go and we jump into the healthy movement aspects and we push so hard that it actually is counterproductive. It spikes cortisol and it causes too much stress. It actually makes you hold on to the excess weight versus letting it go.
Erica Bennett [00:02:15]:
So, Carl, talk to us a little bit about that. What have you seen with that? How do you help your clients work through that? Because I don't think we notice that. I think we go, oh, my God, the weights on. I have to work out harder, I have to be on the treadmill more, I have to lift more, instead of realizing that maybe we actually need to take a step back.
Carl Champion [00:02:34]:
I think when you start to talk about stress, and many people have probably heard this before, there's two different types of stress. There's regular stress and then there's eustress. Eustress is more of, like, working out. Right. It's the good kind of stress that we put our body under. However, if we're completely stressed out already on a daily basis, whether it be at home, life, job, kids, whatever it may be, going into the gym and adding more stress. On top of that, you have to be strategic with it in order to actually see improvements.
Carl Champion [00:03:09]:
And you kind of have to have a planned approach so that your body can slip out of that sympathetic state and back into that parasympathetic state so that you can actually rest, recover, let your cardiovascular system recover, your nervous system recover, your muscular system recover, everything like that. So I think it's important to understand that even though stress usually gets demonized just the word stress, there is some things that are good stressors out there for our body, for our health.
Erica Bennett [00:03:38]:
Yeah. And it's definitely about finding the right amount of stress. I had never experienced a period in my life where I was so stressed that I couldn't eat lots of times. So stressed I eat the ice cream, sure. Not so often that you're so stressed that half an apple made me nauseous. Things were going on outside of my control, but because it had been a gradual progression, I also had adjusted to just operating under that level of stress. So I wasn't even aware of it until it got so bad that it started actually affecting my physical health, like the adrenal glands. My hormone system was shot.
Erica Bennett [00:04:16]:
My digestion was shot. A whole bunch of other things were going on, which is why I wanted to get into movement. I wanted to rebuild in a healthy manner. I wanted to put things back with the right building blocks in finding the right movement. So one of the things that I really valued and learned is amidst all of my big, heavy lifting, so for those of you that follow along, you know that I fell in love with the rack. I fell in love with the back squats. That is my jam. I would do that every single day of the week.
Erica Bennett [00:04:47]:
I mean, I used to be so pissed during my divorce that I just roll into the gym and go to a back corner and just squat heavy, five by five, just go to town on like, 200 pounds, and people are like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, this is the fun. This is how I work through it. But what I also learned is all about zone two, which is that more of like, an active recovery, like an easy place to work out. So educate us, Carl, on heart rate zones and kind of what it means, and then how do we know what zone we're in if we're not using a heart rate monitor?
Carl Champion [00:05:24]:
Sure. So your body has typically two different types of energy systems, right? You're typically either going to be burning carbohydrates, glucose, that type of energy. So think like quick, fast stuff, or you're going to be burning more fat, which is more of your zone one. Zone two type of activities? Well, let me give you an example first. So I used to have this client named Melissa. And Melissa worked in a very high stress environment at work. She had a lot of trouble dropping the weight that she wanted to drop. At the same time, she was very routine, very disciplined about getting her workouts in.
Carl Champion [00:06:10]:
And her favorite workouts were hiit style workouts, high heart rate stuff, right. The stuff that's going to stress your body out. So she would go from work, where she's extremely stressed, and to the gym to put more of that stress on her body. So at the end of the day, her body isn't getting rest, right. It's not entering that recovery state, that parasympathetic state. And so as she started to work with me, we focus less on caloric burn, which usually comes with the high heart rate type activities. Right. A lot of us have been trained into the thinking that, well, working out is just a means to an end to burn calories.
Carl Champion [00:06:49]:
It's like, I ate a piece of cake last night, so now I got to spend 30 minutes on the treadmill today. Which is a really weird relationship with exercise that you don't want to get into. Right. That exercise, that fitness should be meant to more or less celebrate what your body can do. It's you taking the time to take care of yourself. And so what we started to slowly do with Melissa was we started to change her activities from high heart rate stuff, sweating a lot, cardio, and we had her start lifting more weights. Obviously, when you're weightlifting, you're not going to burn as many calories as you are during a cardio session.
Carl Champion [00:07:33]:
And what I mean by that is I want to compare apples to apples. So if you were to spend an hour on a treadmill running or jogging and an hour lifting weights, you're going to burn exponentially more calories in that given hour on the treadmill. Right. However, that's when that caloric burn stops is when you're done on the treadmill. When it comes to lifting weights, you're not going to burn quite as many calories lifting for an hour than you are on the treadmill. However, what that adaptation forces your body to do 24, 48 hours later is continually repair the damage. Damage, good damage that you've done to muscle fibers in repair and recovery. Right.
Carl Champion [00:08:13]:
So we're getting that physical benefit we are challenging. We're providing stimulus to the muscles without jacking her heart rate up. Right. So after that training session, she can slip back into that parasympathetic state a lot faster than if she went to a cycle class right after work, burned, looked at the old watch and saw she burned 600 calories, got the endorphin rush that she worked really hard. But obviously, that's not going to get her anywhere further down the road because she's just in that stress loop.
Erica Bennett [00:08:47]:
Yeah, I think it was really helpful for me. Luckily, I was doing classes, we were wearing heart rate monitors. Wednesdays were active recovery days and I was really trying to maintain this zone two level. And every time I'd do anything, my heart rate spiked and my heart rate spiked and we could see it. And so the trainer was like, take it down, take it down, right? Like something as simple as we were doing. Well, it's not simple, but like burpees over a bar, right? So you got to do a burpee and then you got to jump over the bar and then you do another one. And so it's not anything heavy.
Erica Bennett [00:09:22]:
It's got a lot of explosive activities. My heart rate couldn't handle it. And he's like, literally, you're going to step over the bar. And then it was, you're not actually going to move anywhere. You are just working on staying in that zone. Because my body was so ready to fight or flight, right? It was so ready to take on what was happening that I couldn't actually maintain a more calm, fat burn level. And that was when things started to shift. I think it also can be really challenging because a lot of newer coaches, specifically, or coaches who haven't worked a lot with women in our unique hormone system, want you to just push through it, right? I hear it all the time.
Erica Bennett [00:10:03]:
Just keep pushing it'll, regulate it'll, get there, just keep pushing and working at it. And it was really hard for me to learn how to push back and eventually I just started ignoring them and being like, it's not going to happen. But do you have any advice then for listeners who are experiencing that? Maybe they have joined a gym, maybe they're getting a lot of pressure from that coach who's just saying, work harder, push harder, it'll get there. What could they do? Or what should they say?
Carl Champion [00:10:32]:
I would say obviously working with a coach can help give you some guidance towards where you want to go. And vetting the coaches up front is an important process because in today's day and age of social media, right, it's kind of unfortunate that people can reach the level of influence or celebrity without the merit behind it. And so I think spending a little bit of extra time up front finding a coach that feels right to you, that seems like they're educated, seems like they have some place of experience that they're speaking from. I think that's a really good place to start. And I think beyond that, a lot of people need to understand more about breathing. Because as you probably experience in alpha, your respiratory system has a lot to do with what your heart rate is at, right. If you're doing a lot of chest breathing right, I'm pretty sure we're still one of the only mammals on Earth that can run and breathe at the same time, right? And so we get into this habit of expanding through the chest instead of using more diaphragmatic yoga type of breathing. And one of my mentors a while ago mentioned to me, he's like, when you're in a training session, what you want to do during your rest period specifically, is try to bring your heart rate down as low as it can go.
Carl Champion [00:12:00]:
So there's a famous bodybuilder, Ben Pikolski, who he meditates for two to three minutes in between his sets because he's looking at it as, okay, I only have so many heartbeats to get me through the next maybe 60 to 90 minutes before my body reaches that point of fatigue, whether it's through muscular fatigue, cardiovascular fatigue. So really understanding how do I breathe during those rest periods, because then that down the road helps you control that heart rate a lot better.
Erica Bennett [00:12:30]:
Yeah, breathing has been it's like under talked about, talked about all the time when you're looking at meditating, right, when you're looking at yoga, because we're literally partnering the breath with the movement. But when it comes to the rest of our time, we're not talking about breathing. And it is the one thing it'll tap into your parasympathetic nervous system, right? You can't tell your heart rate to beat slower. You can't tell your body or your mind to relax. You can tell your body, take five deep breaths, start to release that tension, and with every breath, you are impacting the rest of those systems, slowing the heart rate, relieving some of the stress and anxiety, impacting those cortisol levels. I even think about. I jumped on the bandwagon of the Lumen device breathes and records your am I burning carbs, am I burning fat? Because I love Data. So I was like, OOH, I want to know what's happening.
Erica Bennett [00:13:24]:
And if I sit down and meditate first and just do regular breathing, but focused breathing, I score lower, right, than if I'm not. I'm realizing, wow, Erica, you're still really shallow breathing, you're still moving really fast. That's keeping all those systems spiked a little bit higher. So being able to watch that breath as you're working through any movement is going to be really important. And this is something you can do outside. So a couple of times a day, just sit down, put your hands on your belly, on your diaphragm, and just allow that feeling of letting it move. And if it doesn't move, then you really are all chest breathing up here. And you need to just start focusing on like, okay, how do I relax the shoulders? And how do I allow that belly to drop forward to move through it? I love meditating between sets.
Erica Bennett [00:14:16]:
This might have to happen now. I'm going to be over there on a back day like, okay, we're ready.
Carl Champion [00:14:22]:
And like you said, that the meditation. I don't know if you've heard of box breathing before. It kind of goes along the same with all those, but sometimes I'll practice box breathing and my protocol for that is do a four second inhale through your nose, hold that air in your lungs for 4 seconds, do a four second exhale. And then the trickiest part is sitting there with nothing in your lungs for 4 seconds. That's when your body really starts to freak out. The deeper that you can get into that box breathing cycle, the more your body is going to adapt to that stressful feeling so that you're not impacted by it so much, especially when you feel like you're gasping for air. You're getting low on breath or respiratory as you're working out.
Erica Bennett [00:15:06]:
Yeah. So you guys, your takeaway, you need to start some four second box breathing. I know we've mentioned it before, but we haven't really said, just go do it. It doesn't have to be a long period of time. This is not another thing that has to be added. I mean, you literally could do some box breathing in the shower. Enjoy the feel of the warm shower, especially if you're in the northern hemisphere. We're moving into winter, right? Showers are going to get a little longer, a little warmer, because now we're all freezing over here in the Twin Cities.
Erica Bennett [00:15:33]:
But while you're in there, enjoy the feel of the hot water, enjoy the steam, the relaxation, and do a couple of cycles of that box breathing. Do a few before you go to bed and it'll change the quality of your sleep that night. It's super simple. So four in, hold for four. Four out on the out. Empty lungs, hold for four. They do say that's like the closest to your body freaking out to what it feels like to be dead. Right.
Erica Bennett [00:15:57]:
Because there's no air in the lungs. It's just uncomfortable, you guys. And 4 seconds is totally, totally doable. We didn't say 8 seconds. Some people do really long box breathing. Just four.
Carl Champion [00:16:10]:
Right? But yeah, even going through ten cycles of a box breath, if you have somewhat of a busy mind like I do, just sitting there trying to do ten consecutive box breaths can be challenging because all of a sudden your mind starts to wonder, you're not counting to four anymore, you might get messed up in the cycle. So I think a good goal for people is just sit down, try to do ten, and then try to build on top of that each time that you're doing it more.
Erica Bennett [00:16:34]:
Yeah, I love that. So to close out on heart rate, zone two before I ask you, my next question is, how does somebody know that they're in zone two if they're not monitoring on a heart rate? What do kind of each of the there are five zones, right? What do they each feel like so that somebody can kind of if they don't have all the tech and the gadgets, they can gauge themselves what it should feel like in their body.
Carl Champion [00:16:58]:
Sure. A lot of times my workouts, I'll have my clients end with a ten minute inclined treadmill walk to bring them back into that parasympathetic state. That zone two. And so how I tell them because a lot of my I don't do a ton of coaching with heart rate straps I have in the past, but I tell them do it more based off of feeling. So if you're walking on the treadmill, imagine I'm standing next to you. We would still be able to kind of carry on a conversation or maybe like every Eigth or 10th word, I might have to do the just to get one more breath in as I can keep going. So don't think like zone two would be and then I came on Erica's podcast, right. It's much more calmer than that.
Erica Bennett [00:17:41]:
Yeah.
Carl Champion [00:17:42]:
So, yeah, if you don't have a chest strap or a way to and you can even do a pulse check on your wrist or up on your neck to gauge, typically that zone two. I would say most people are going to be in zone two if they're under 120 and then kind of based off of that, the better shape you're in, the lower that number is going to go.
Erica Bennett [00:18:01]:
Yeah. So definitely. Can you still talk while you're working out? Right. So can you carry on a conversation if you're super winded, if you can't catch your breath, slow it down, even if the workout you're trying to follow says you're supposed to sprint or you're supposed to run, if you can't maintain that heart rate, right. You're dropping it down, what will happen is your body is going to adjust. Like Carl just shared, that your ability, it adapts. So your heart rate starts to change. You can hold that zone longer under higher pressure if you notice that.
Erica Bennett [00:18:34]:
For me, I know I broke down and bought a treadmill. I'm looking at it right here. So I can just walk because my steps were super low. So we'll get to tips in a second, but after no longer working in a corporate office, I wasn't hitting 20,000 steps a day, running to the bathroom, to the meetings, on the second story, to the cafeteria, right. Like, all of a sudden I was barely hitting 3000 steps and so now I just plug it in, right. I do my 60 minutes while watching TV at night and I know for me, for zone two, it's right about like 45 minutes right now that I break a sweat. Even though I'm not winded, I'm talking last night I did it while talking on the phone to my friend. We chatted the whole time and all of a sudden I'm like, whoop, okay, I've hit that point.
Erica Bennett [00:19:16]:
All of a sudden I'm hot and your body is turning on the furnace and getting through the stuff that it needs to. And it is far more effective for me than doing sprints, than running a mile, than pushing my body to a level that yesterday's workout was a little intense. What happened? I came home and I wanted to eat a candy bar because it was too much in the system. And I was like, well, I ate the candy bar with an apple so that I could pretend like it was healthy somewhere in the middle.
Carl Champion [00:19:52]:
I have a question for you really quick. So when you started working out at the garage, how did you meet John or how did you guys start training together? And then when you transitioned out of the garage and kind of back into the gym, how did you choose which gym, which coach you were going to go to? Everything like that?
Erica Bennett [00:20:11]:
Yeah, it's like you read my mind. Those were the next questions coming up. How do you pick the right type of movement? How do you pick the right coach? My long story is in 2015 when the then husband just quit, comes home from the bar. Love you. I'm not in love with you. I'm done. My world crashes.
Erica Bennett [00:20:33]:
Now, about six months earlier than that, we lived half a mile from a lifetime location, and he had been pushing me to sign up. like, you just should go sign up, if for nothing else, go sign up to drop our son off at the daycare and sit in the cafeteria for 2 hours. He had worked retail, so he worked all weekend. I was home solo all weekend with what was then a new baby. By time 15 rolled around, he was like three or four, and I just was super stressed, right, because I had all this stuff and I couldn't figure out how to fill the day. And so he's like, just go. And I never did. So then the world falls apart. I can't eat half an apple.
Erica Bennett [00:21:06]:
I am wanting to build this back appropriately because I had reached my heaviest point at that time. I was really unhappy with what I looked like, but I was a new mom, working full time, stressed out about the relationship. There was no extra time to get workouts in. It wasn't happening. I had to finish my yoga teacher training in hopes that if I dropped real cash on the line that made me have to do my yoga, I'd start doing it again daily. And I still just wasn't doing it. I was exhausted. So I end up going and joining boot camp.
Erica Bennett [00:21:40]:
I started first by signing up for their boot camp classes and realized right away that the high intensity, the push, the do more reps, the go faster wasn't working for me. And I was already starting to push back. So if we're doing whatever the rep or the movement is, even think it was something like fire hydrants where you're on your hands and your knees and you're lifting up one leg right and we were supposed to use a resistance band or we were supposed to go faster. It was something along those lines and I just said no. And I went slower and they were like, what are you doing? You need to go faster. This is about reps. And I was like, that's not going to work for me because I'm going to start cheating and using the wrong muscles, which is only going to create unhealthy patterns like the right muscle isn't activating and so I prefer to do little micro movements.
Erica Bennett [00:22:28]:
So I started in boot camp but within a month, I was like, this is not right. I got recruited into Alpha. Alpha is kind of like Lifetime's version, kind of sort of like CrossFit. I know they don't like it when I say that, but you're squats and deadlifts and cleans and snatches and then you're also doing what I loved was the metabolic conditioning. And so not only were we lifting heavy but we were having some sort of 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes work to really work on that heart rate zone. So joined Alpha in 17. No, it must have been before that. Anyways never left.
Erica Bennett [00:23:02]:
I was at a Fridley location for a while, then one of my friends was like, no, you need to come to the New Hope location. So moved to New Hope location still in Alpha class. That's where I met John, which is who I met Carl through. I went through quite a few different trainers at the New Hope location but really found that it was my version of therapy. It was just another therapy. It had movement, it had physical rebuilding and there was a social aspect because of the group.
Erica Bennett [00:23:36]:
I really felt fulfilled at the end of all of the classes. I worked with John for a few years out of New Hope before COVID hit and shut everything down. So when COVID first hit and we all stopped working out, I was laughing because I was the only one not working out and baking banana bread every day because that's what we all did, right? And I was losing weight and I was like, well, this is weird, what is going on right now? I'm not working out and I'm eating a ton of junk that I never used to eat and I'm losing even more weight than I thought was possible. So I did my best to navigate it solo. Eventually I was like, no, we're going to get back into something. John had opened up his garage gym and started working out there a couple of days a week. Eventually what happened was it took me over an hour to drive round trip to get 1 hour in the gym and it was not paying off.
Erica Bennett [00:24:34]:
It was adding more stress to my life than helping. And so I had to make the hard choice that I had to stop and that was scary because I didn't want to lose what was happening, but I knew that I was driving home bitching about something, right? And my girlfriend's like, you need to stop, you're more stressed after this than before because of the drive and the rushing to get back and all this stuff. So I left and ended up going to a little tiny gym on the corner, like little loving hands at home. The guy just collected fitness equipment and everything was jammed in there, but nobody was ever there. And so you used a little key fob and you let yourself in and I started using an app called Fitbod. Have you heard of the Fitbod app?
Carl Champion [00:25:18]:
I have heard of it, I don't have any experience with it.
Erica Bennett [00:25:21]:
So what I loved is it tracked my workouts and it built it for me. So the last thing I want to think through is what I actually need to do, like even to the point of if somebody writes me a workout and I know five x five and DA DA DA, I don't want to have to think of what it actually means. I don't want to have to rethink of what that movement means even though I know it. So I love that there was a number and a video and then I just hit go and it made it very easy. I did that for quite a while until finally rejoining Alpha end of last year. So my cycles had shifted again. I started putting on more weight and I was like, what is going on? That new relationship 15 that you put on through Jameson and French fries had caught up with me, and I wanted to move a little bit more. But what I have learned is I thought I needed more movement, but I'm experiencing that same little bit of a struggle of it's too much on some days because we don't have the active recovery day, which is why I've added in 2 miles of walking or yoga on the days I'm not in the gym, that it was just stressing my body.
Erica Bennett [00:26:39]:
And my body held on to every extra pound that it had, and it's been far harder than it should be. So I think your other question was how do you pick what you do? How do you pick what you? And this is the same question I wanted to ask you to tell people as well. For me, I really go in seasons I crave. Like when I went back to Alpha, I was so ecstatic, I was so happy. It was the thing that I had missed. I had been gone for a lot of years. I walked back in and blew through every PR I had by at least 15 pounds. And I'd walked in, I was like, oh, I'm not going to hit anything because I haven't lifted anything heavier than 195 pounds in like three years.
Erica Bennett [00:27:24]:
And all of a sudden. It's 250. It was 260. Like deadlift was a new PR. Back squat was a new PR. Everything was just exploding. I really loved it. I needed it.
Erica Bennett [00:27:38]:
I wanted it back. And then I had a new season. Something shifted where that old version of me, this I have to prove that I can do it, which was a super important season of my divorce process. Somebody had to carry me through the shit that was my divorce. And so this other almost like version of me showed up that said, you can hike the mountain. You can lift the weights, you can push harder. Because I needed her to get me through it. And this summer I realized that I don't need her as often because I have found me more.
Erica Bennett [00:28:12]:
That led me to craving slower movement again, moving back through the treadmill work, moving back through yoga work, and also looking at shifting back into using the Fitbod app. Because I don't need to be doing a four week power build to get to a new PR anymore. And so for me, I look at what do I crave in my body? Surprise. One I've really craved running like one lap on a track. Not a full mile. We're not there yet. But I found that I was like, no, actually, I want to move. I want to move like that.
Erica Bennett [00:28:54]:
And so then I started optting to run the track instead of doing the row machine, which is always what I used to do for some sort of cardio warm up. Give yourself the opportunity to flex and try different styles because there's a ton. Your boot camp stuff is typically a little bit faster. CrossFit stuff is a little bit more power focused. There's all the hiit classes that are out there that are that high intensity interval training. And then there's just a lot of like I even was going to sign up for they have classes specific for the aging population. I was just going to go to those because I wanted to just slowly move but continue to move. So I think it's about trying different ones.
Erica Bennett [00:29:42]:
Don't feel like you have to pick the one that's really popular and kind of back to your point. Anybody can hop on social media and become Insta famous nowadays and say that they know what they're doing in terms of training bodies and understanding what's going on. And just because somebody found something that worked for them doesn't mean that it's the right fit for everybody. You have to be the one that listens to your body. And I've bought some of them just to try them because I was like, OOH, a 30 day booty program. Yeah, I'm going to buy this. I'm going to do whatever, and I get through it. And I'm like that's great.
Erica Bennett [00:30:19]:
It didn't help me because I didn't squat 250 pounds. So I was like, holy shit. I have to do like 100 of these to be able to feel anything, I need a little bit more than what we're talking about here. But you've got to listen to your body. So kind of partnering the heart rate zone, what feels good, what feels like more stress, and then trying different types. But what do you recommend for people to figure out kind of different explore different options?
Carl Champion [00:30:48]:
Yeah, I think from an activity standpoint, I don't do this myself, so I'm not practicing what I preach. But I think that variety is a thing when it comes to physical fitness. I love weights. I've always loved weights. I don't do enough cardiovascular training. I'm very aware of you know, think about it in the sense of COVID right? One thing that COVID taught us was, don't have all your eggs in one basket, maybe because if your whole thing is going to the gym, well, maybe the gym is going to close down one day. Or if your whole thing is running and you live in Minnesota, well, there's about three or four months where it's absolutely miserable to run outside. Right?
Erica Bennett [00:31:32]:
Three or four, yeah.
Carl Champion [00:31:35]:
Right. I'm being a little generous. I'm being a little generous with that, but yeah, I would say so. Kind of like you were saying, do a little bit of sampling, right? Maybe you try cardiovascular training for a little bit. Maybe you try mobility training for a little bit. Maybe you then cycle back to some type of strength training. That way when you get to a point because I think a lot of people have a long ways to go before they can really listen to their body and understand what their body is telling them. And so you're there.
Carl Champion [00:32:05]:
You know exactly what your body is looking for and what it wants. But I don't think that you can get to that place without getting the experience of trying out some of those other methods, those other strategies for physical fitness.
Erica Bennett [00:32:17]:
Yeah, I agree, because I think we're really disconnected. In fact, Shameless Plug, I wrote a program on that. It's called Stop the Body Bullshit, which literally is trying to help you reconnect with your body. But anyways, we'll save that for a different day. I think the other thing to call out, you guys, is that we're saying try and feel around for what you like, but to see your results, consistency is key. And so if I were to jump in weightlifting, like, right now, I'm only down to lifting two days a week. So I'm not expecting to see big gains. I'm not expecting even necessarily to maintain what I was when I was lifting four days a week, because I'm not being as consistent.
Erica Bennett [00:32:59]:
I'm not working my muscles the way that I was, but I am being consistent in making sure that I am still active four to five days a week. So that's where I'm putting in the yoga. I'm putting in the working out. If you are jumping and testing and trying different things, just know that when you find one that like, oh, this feels good, or I really like the group, or I want to stick with this for a while, give it a month, sit with it, and give it some time to try it out. I probably desire a new type of activity every three to four months. So I notice that I get real good at three months. I start to get the itch where I'm like, oh, I'm not sure, I'm not sure this is fitting my needs anymore. By four months, I'm ready to jump into something else and figure out what that new solution is.
Carl Champion [00:33:49]:
Yeah, and that's interesting that it's kind of around that three month time period, because you've probably experienced this with just general programming. Like, typically I'll program anywhere between eight and 16 week blocks with my clients before we switch something up because it's right around that some people it's going to be eight weeks. And also, obviously, it's going to depend on what you're training. Are you training for power? Are you training for strength, endurance? But right around that eight to 16 week time period is when our bodies start to adapt. Right. So then what used to challenge us isn't necessarily challenging us to the same degree that it was in the beginning. So that's probably when your body says, okay, I need the next challenge, whatever that is, because I'm still getting something from this, but it doesn't feel like it did in the beginning.
Erica Bennett [00:34:32]:
Yeah, it's almost like I'm ready to layer something else in. So one of the challenges right now is there's not enough days that are actually lower body for me. And I'm repairing some trap shoulder arm issues that are going on. And so I've cut anything that requires me to have the pull with your traps. Because what was happening, that micro movement, my traps took over everything. My lats weren't engaging. It was creating more tennis elbow issue. And so even one little movement of anything that pulls my shoulder up to my ear, that muscle is like, hell yes, let's go.
Erica Bennett [00:35:12]:
I'm like, no, stop it, stop it. And then it takes me a while to get it back down. And so that's where it's like, great. I would love to have four days of lower body with upper body, like complementary stuff, lighter weights, more reps. So being able my body's like, great, we can keep that lower body lifting in there, but we need something else. We need you to move us in a different way because it's just not hitting the mark anymore. I just get antsy and I'm ready to switch it up. Well, I can't believe we are almost out of town, but I have more questions.
Erica Bennett [00:35:53]:
We're almost out of town, we're almost out of time. We can leave town too. Who knows?
Carl Champion [00:35:57]:
One thing I was going to mention too, that I really liked what you said about scaling. Now you said you're lifting twice a week, heavy, right now.
Erica Bennett [00:36:04]:
Yes.
Carl Champion [00:36:05]:
So you understand, right? Two days a week is not enough to progress weights. That's more of a maintenance style phase. Right. And I think a lot of people need to understand that too when they're going in. Maybe all you can fit into your schedule is those two days. Right. That's great if you can fit those two days in, but also make sure that your expectations about progress are going to match what you can dedicate towards that. And that's when starting to work with a coach, if you don't have any ideas on your own about how quickly you should be progressing or how fast you should be moving down that road, that's when a coach can really benefit and kind of help you draw that path.
Erica Bennett [00:36:41]:
Yeah. So let's talk because I want to talk about two things before we close today. And this is a perfect segue into what are some baby steps like you guys, if you're like. I don't even have 2 hours a week. That's fine. My first tip is start with a 15 minutes walk. Just get outside, just take a little 15 minutes walk where you're just paying attention to your breathing. Put some good music on that, relaxes you.
Erica Bennett [00:37:06]:
Use it like a meditative walk. You're not running or pushing yourself, you're just going for a stroll. Start by carving out that time or looking at making some slight food changes which we can get into in a second. But how else do you recommend people start and move into adding more? Because we can't all just jump into five days a week without impacting other areas of our lives.
Carl Champion [00:37:32]:
Yeah, there's very few people that can kind of dive headfirst and just almost do like a complete 180 off of the bat. Right. That's usually hard for most people to do. Honestly. Movement is usually where I start with most people. Even more so than diet. With a lot of people it kind of will depend on the training age of the client, what they've tried in the past that hasn't worked, that'll determine where we put our focus in the beginning. But if you were to give me a gen pop person who's sedentary most of the day yeah, the first thing we're probably going to chase after is getting everybody likes to use 10,000 steps as your marker.
Carl Champion [00:38:13]:
A marker. And I think that's great. But if you're only moving 5000 steps a day and I tell you to go walk 10,000 steps a day, double that. That's a big hill to climb. So I'm in the camp of let's add 2000 to what you're currently doing and then see if we can hit that for a couple of weeks and then add in maybe another 2000 after that. And teaching the clients, I'm asking you to set aside time to do a dedicated walk. This is fitting it into other parts of your life. It's a bit corny and cliche, but it's parking at the back of the parking lot.
Carl Champion [00:38:48]:
and walking all the way to the front of the store. It's taking the stairs, not the elevator, because most of us struggle with the hours in the day. Right. If we had another hour or two, maybe we could have dedicated time for that. But we're trying to sneak it in here and there and again, when people are working in front of a computer remotely at an office, those steps become more and more sparse. So that's the challenge is trying to figure out where you can fit them into your day and just making it a focus of, okay, I haven't moved in the last hour. Let me get up and just do a five minute walk or something like that. Get my blood flowing a little bit.
Erica Bennett [00:39:23]:
Yeah, so I love that one. Yeah, a little bit. Just try and increase those steps little bit every day. Aim for that three week time period. I think another easy good one is some gentle stretching. We get really tight sitting at our office all day, but it's super easy to start your day with just five minutes of stretching. Or if you watch TV at night, instead of just sitting on the couch, get down on the floor, work through some of those stiff areas, do a little stretching. Then there are tons of resources on easy stretches that you can do, so I know you can find what you need to do and then just guide yourself through what feels good.
Erica Bennett [00:40:03]:
The other thing too, you guys, would be consistency, which we've mentioned. But it's like right now my lift days are Tuesday and Friday. That's not ideal because there's a big gap in the middle. Right. So I know that I need to fill in if I'm going to work out Tuesday, then maybe it's a Tuesday, Wednesday, and a Friday. So try and make sure that you just don't pile all your workouts into three days together in the week, but that you kind of space them out a little bit. So you may be workout and a rest day, workout and a rest day. But do you have any other tips on that on the ideal number of days or how to kind of separate them out as they're building and adding more?
Carl Champion [00:40:42]:
Yeah, again, it's going to depend a little bit on the goal and the client, but I think three to four days per week is a really good place for people to start. Two days a week is great. You're going to see significantly more progress once you start adding that third or that fourth day in. Like anything other things too. Make it important, put it in your calendar. Right. If you just say you have the thought like, oh, I thought I'm going to work out at noon today. Well, noon comes and goes and you don't.
Carl Champion [00:41:14]:
But if you put it in your calendar, you might prioritize that time a little bit more than if it's just a thought in your head.
Erica Bennett [00:41:21]:
Yes. Schedule your big rocks, you guys. Little Stephen Covey. Right. Seven Habits of Highly Successful people. Put the things that are important in your calendar and they are more likely to happen. So schedule that time. I like to keep a consistent time.
Erica Bennett [00:41:35]:
So mine's like a 530 class, and if I'm not going to class that day, I go upstairs and I do yoga in my bedroom or that's when I go for my walk so that I know that 530 is my workout time and it's consistent four days a week. I also would agree two days a week, I don't I probably lose gains at three days a week is my maintenance. When I add a fourth day, that's when I finally start to see some shifts in body composition, in ability of what I'm lifting or how the workout is feeling, when I can move some of my heart rate zones. So definitely three or four days. So thank you guys for joining us. My last words of wisdom, there are a ton of coaches out there. It's okay to walk away from some of them. I can't tell you how many coaches I said no to and I left, and sometimes they did not love that.
Erica Bennett [00:42:30]:
I remember one coach got pissed, she came back and she's like, what's your problem with me? And I go, I have no problem with you. But your style in how you're running your classes doesn't fit with my body. I'm not going to be here just trying to lift heavy, push more. I'm going to get injured. That's not my goal. My goal is to feel good, feel comfortable in my body and love what I'm doing. So test out different coaches, either joining a class, working privately with somebody, especially if you're in the beginning, this is like investing in your therapy. If you're going to pay for therapy, you can pay for a coach, too.
Erica Bennett [00:43:06]:
But if you can't pay for a coach because I know money is tight. Get into a group class, start to talk and ask questions to people in the fitness world that have gone through trainings that are aware of what's going on in your body to help guide you. There are so many resources out there, so you just have to find the one that is the right fit for you. So thank you, Carl, for joining us today and for helping guide us through our fitnessing journey. I hope you guys have a great absolutely.
Carl Champion [00:43:32]:
Could I mention one more?
Erica Bennett [00:43:33]:
Yeah, yeah.
Carl Champion [00:43:36]:
Okay. You just mentioned what I wanted to kind of wrap a bow around everything at the end.
Erica Bennett [00:43:40]:
Beautiful.
Carl Champion [00:43:41]:
I don't know why it's like this, right? But when it comes to physical fitness and health, most people are like, I got this. No problem, right? If all of these TikTokers, if all these instagrammers can do it, then I can figure it out, right? No problem. If you know me, this will be very funny. That's like me talking about the stock market. I have no idea what I'm talking about. So I pay somebody to figure that part out for me, right. Because I don't have the time to learn about the stock market.
Carl Champion [00:44:11]:
So I have a financial advisor who I give money to and he makes all the right decisions for me, right. So when you're looking for a coach, two things that I can tell you, it's not something to look for, it's something that you're going to feel, do you like this person? Do you trust them enough? Because you're going to have to like them enough to spend about an hour with them and you're going to have to trust them enough to give them your money in exchange for results, right? So if you can get those two feelings, doesn't have to necessarily be the best coach in the world, but if they have those two qualities and you guys jive, then it's probably a pretty good fit.
Erica Bennett [00:44:48]:
Yeah. And I love that because I know that I pick up things quickly and so I just took it on and learned it and apply it and get connected with my body. And for people who have zero idea where to start, that can be really hard. And I didn't get to that point without the coaches that I did work with, without the classes that I took. Because even like you guys, I mentioned Fitbod. It's a great app. But I sat there and I was like, I have to know what works and what doesn't work, and I have to understand what's a push, what's a pull, what's a full body, what am I working on, and adapt it as needed. I really wanted a coach to just program it for me.
Erica Bennett [00:45:31]:
And that's the beauty of it. When you are so stressed from all the other things that are going on, this is where a coach is key. Because then you don't have to think about it, you don't have to research it. They're going to be there with you, understanding where are you at, how is your body moving, what results are you seeing or do you want to see. And then it's their job to really manage that for you. They can't do the workout for you. That's not their job. That's your job.
Erica Bennett [00:45:57]:
Their job is to understand the programming that keeps you fit and safe and is building you towards what you want. And they're going to be able to balance that out, to bring in the exercises to guide you through it, to watch you while you're doing it so that you're not getting injured. Right. They're your personal expert to help you through it. So I do think there's so much value in finding the right fit and enabling them to take over. That part of the task. Then you just have to show up and do the work. They've got the rest of the pieces for you.
Erica Bennett [00:46:29]:
All right, thank you, Carl. Great conversation. I look forward to seeing you all again next week for another episode of The Crazy Ex Wife's Club. Until then, I challenge you. Go work on your steps this week, just for fun. Get out, get some movement, see what feels good, do a little box breathing, and then maybe start to research where you want to go, what gym you might join, or movement that you want to put your body through. So until then, you guys take care, and I'll talk to you all soon. Bye.
