Stress Free Summer Stress Free Summer is my step-by-step training program that will help you navigate the roadblocks that may pop up during the summer so that you can cruise through summer with more fun and no guilt.

The post How Long Does It Take To Get Fit?|0701 appeared first on Kim Barnes Jefferson.

Stress Free Summer Challenge

The Stress-Free Summer Challenge is a 66-day healthy lifestyle transformation challenge that shows you EXACTLY how to stay consistent with your health and workouts this summer with ease. This challenge was created to help woman over 40, lose weight in a sane and sustainable way – without all the stress! Will you join me? We start on July 18th! https://www.fitgirlmagic.com/stressfreesummer22_eb

The post Why Women Over 40 Need To Strength Train| 5 appeared first on Kim Barnes Jefferson.

This week’s Fit Girl Magic podcast guest is helping your body move in ways it hadn’t before but by making it not only mobile but flexible as well! Jessica John is the Owner of Circus Mobility. She’s here to talk about the mobility and flexibility that we all need in our lives. That is her jam and that is why I had to have her on today! (Umm… she also did a stint in the CIA….. omg so interesting to me!! LOL You don’t know how hard that was for me to not get off track with that one!)

Alright so a little bit about Jessica! Jessica John is the owner of Circus Mobility, a company that coaches aerialists to peak performance worldwide. Jessica has a movement background as a circus artist, a dancer, and a competitive athlete. Before finding aerial arts over a decade ago.

For Jessica, she has always had a personal trainer, she went to the gym 4 days a week, and thought she was in good shape…. Then she realized very quickly that she could not do one of the fundamental things that you do in aerial. Surprisingly, she didn’t have the strength to invert her body in the air. From that point on, she was immediately hooked because she recognized a weakness, and she was so intrigued by it in general! She wanted to do more, so she continued to fail but kept going twice a week for 2 or 3 years. And at this point, she had hired a new personal trainer who was also an aerialist to help her gain the strength she needed.

I showed up and continued to fail… I LOVE this. Because how many people would show up to that first class, be mortified they didn’t crush, and say nope not for me. A LOT OF US! BUT as an athlete, you are trained to be persistent. I feel like so many of us as adults, get into our heads that we should just show up and boom I am doing it. Or that we get it right away.

“BUT, when you do something like aerial, you don’t realize how hard it actually is. It is so much harder, but it is also a lot more motivating. You realize you have this control over your body in a very different way. But you also have to learn that control. You don’t always have it where you think it is. There is constant learning and also requires you to sometimes think on the fly. Things don’t always go according to plan! When I go to the gym, I know I am going to pick something up and then put it back down. And I know what is going to happen. With aerial, you don’t always know. “

Breathing comes into play with this mobility and being able to move as an aerialist. The big problem with aerialists has to do with incontinence and how people are breathing, holding breaths and moving breaths into the pelvic floor. Take that and put that in the air and you are trying to control your body no matter what position you are in, your body is creating tone throughout the body to maintain some level of control. So, your pelvic floor is doing the same thing. Plus, you are doing things that are ab intensive. So, the pelvic floor gets tighter and tighter and aerialists don’t know how to decrease that tone.
(Check out more on my Pelvic Floor Podcast  and my Breathwork Podcast)

Back to the breath, if you can’t take a deep breath other things become more challenging. And this brings up why Jessica sustained a shoulder injury during this. If you are not breathing into the back and upper ribs, it’s really hard for the scapula to sit on the ribs that are really stable from a hanging posture, and this can cause a lot of problems.

“To do the aerial work, I had to change the way I was training to get stronger.”
So many of us start out our journeys at this bodybuilding working out and there wasn’t really an endpoint to WHY I WAS working out. Here, you had to get stronger. What were some of the things you tweaked between a typical gym workout and a just getting stronger workout? There was not much of an emphasis on pulling and hanging that she was doing before. It was much more pushing and lower body intensive training. (15 years ago) This was definitely a good base level of fitness, but she still didn’t feel strong or hold her body weight up with her hands for long periods of time.

When did you start to say, ok, it’s not only being strong? I also need to have some more mobility, flexibility, and stability, if I am really going to accelerate as an aerialist. This started with the shoulder injury, recognizing that I didn’t know how to breathe. I overcorrected in the wrong direction, and I was belly breathing all the time. Recognizing part of my shoulder issue was due to my lack of thoracic extension. In that first silks class, I recognized I wasn’t strong, but the chiropractor appointment after my injury helped me realize I wasn’t mobile. And that was the thing that was holding me back.

SO, because I was injured, I couldn’t do my sport the way I wanted to. I suddenly had a lot of time to fill with something else. So, this is where I became curious about Gyrotonic. I had taken a couple of classes and because I couldn’t do aerial. I knew it was going to help me with that mobility piece I was missing. And that completely changed my path!

How would mobility training help me and my day-to-day life?
Having a good general range of motion at every joint, is going to benefit you with whatever you decide to do in life. Even if you’re not experiencing any discomfort now. It could be what you do next in life. Mobility is one of those things that will help you to adjust to those changes because mobility is a way to prepare for the unknown.

When I talk about mobility, I talk about increasing your end range and controlling your end range. We are not talking about passive flexibility. We still need to increase muscle engagement! And there is a lot of activation happening. Activation is movement. We always think about preparing the body for the range of motion necessary for the task at hand. If your primary form of exercise is lifting, then you are mobilizing for the lift sets that you do and you are mobilizing to counterbalance the lift set you do. If you are someone who doesn’t have a lot of time in their life to workout, I feel like mobility work is something that can be accessible to all.

There is no end game going to the gym but with this, the end game is my long-term healthy longevity. You want to be able to get out of your own chair, live on your own, get off the toilet, play golf or tennis without assistance!

How many days a week are you putting mobility into the programs you give people or your clients?
This all really depends on the goals of the clients. Some people have mobility goals and others have performance goals that have mobility requirements. Some may require longer sessions that are devoted to mobility going through all types of flexibility. Others may do consistent mobility work without long sessions, but also need hip stability control, etc. Sometimes the movement in the gym you are doing is a mobility training movement like a squat, etc. so you may be thinking about your squat differently.

I think everyone can benefit from adding a lot of mobility to your workout! And doing less can sometimes be more. If you are overloading your system, it can be counterproductive. So be sure to recognize how stress impacts your body. If you are really stressed and continue to train normally, a heavy session can cause you to move backwards too.

When it comes to aerial, people have a lot of different reasons to do it. Some have to do with control and being able to control your body is very empowering. Especially while aging!! Being able to achieve new things as well. It feels great in ways that can’t quite be compared to anything else. And check your ego. You have to be like “ok, I suck at this, but I want to improve.” Push yourself into a place where you become consistent and consistent with your growth.

And another huge aspect that we may not realize that is really wonderful about aerial is being present! You need to be here to survive! And all the noise goes away. Find that thing in your life that makes all other noise fade into the background.

What makes you feel most magical.
What makes me feel most magical are certain moments in coaching. There is something really magical in giving a cue to someone to help them succeed in a way that feels like magic for them. So, what feels amazing is like a message I got today. “Jessica gave me this magic cue.” And it does feel like magic because cueing is so individual.
Queueing is very relational, and I think that is what makes it feel magical.

You succeed, you go to the next thing, you succeed, you go to the next thing. But when you HELP someone else succeed, it feels very different.

LINKS
Free Hip Mobility Class:
https://courses.circusmobility.com/hips

Jessica John Circus Mobility Instagram:
www.instagram.com/circusmobility

Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/kimbarnesjeffersoncoach

Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/

Website:
https://kimbarnesjefferson.com/

Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/id1476883661

Breathwork Podcast:
https://kimbarnesjefferson.com/what-is-breathwork-and-how-can-i-learn-it/

Pelvic Floor Podcast:
https://kimbarnesjefferson.com/your-pelvic-floor/

Guilt-Free Summer Guide:
https://www.fitgirlmagic.com/gfsummer_2022/

The post Why you need mobility and strength appeared first on Kim Barnes Jefferson.

To get started, you actually have to pick up heavier weights. No, not the 3-5 pound weights my 99-year-old grandmother uses, but the ones heavier than 5 pounds. And stop right there girl, NO you are not going to get bulky by reaching for a heavier weight, that is a HUGE myth.

So what DOES Strength Training do you ask if not make you

Helps to boost your metabolism

• Helps you to get that lean sexy physique
• Helps alleviate stress, anxiety & depression
• Helps to build stronger bones – When you lift weights, the muscle pulls on the bone and the more it pulls on the bone, the stronger your body gets!
• Helps you to burn more calories at rest!
• You will burn calories up to 72 hours longer after you have lifted than you will on any piece of cardio equipment.

Now that we know what it all does, let me break down the myths about strength training and let you know what to really believe! And people, these are questions I get asked all the time, so listen up!

Myth number 1, Weightlifting will make you bulky

Unless your body is PUMPING with testosterone, you ARE NOT going to get bulky! It is physically impossible. Men put on more muscle because they have so much testosterone, women, not so much UNLESS you are taking something to increase your testosterone in your body.

Instead, weightlifting is going to accentuate your feminine form, so you develop long sexy muscles without it being an excess of fat that makes you look bulky.

In order to get the full benefits of lifting, you need to challenge your muscles. If you can perform 15 or more reps with the same amount of weight without the last few reps feeling challenging to lift up, then you need to up the weights. The goal is to break down those muscles so that they can build the muscle back up.

Myth number 2, If I stop lifting weights, the muscle will turn to fat

LADIES!!!! There is no biological process in your body that says when this happens do that. Especially when it comes to turning the muscle to fat. This. Does. Not. Happen! Yes, muscle shrinks when not being built, so when they shrink, they may not have that same visible look as when they are fully used, but they will never turn to fat. Trust me, they are still there

Don’t get me wrong though, as we age, yes! Absolutely we lose muscle, but it’s not turning into fat, it’s just flabby muscle. Undeveloped, muscle fibers are actually what you are seeing when this happens. But if we continue to lift in a regular fashion, you will be able to keep up the pace with nature. So, if you are lifting anywhere from 2-4 times a week, this would be awesome and would do wonders for your body!

Myth number 3, You’re likely to get hurt lifting weights

If you are physically active on a regular basis, yes, you are highly likely to pull something or strain something. Absolutely. But as we get older our balance starts to not be what it is used to and did you know that every 11 seconds an older person is treated in the ER for a fall and falls cause serious injury. Mainly because their balance isn’t what it used to be, but if you strength trained this will help with your balance tremendously.

When I first started training, I went to a seminar and the woman giving the seminar was 75 and it was all about balance. The #1 reason that takes people 80 and above out of the game falls. So now is the time to start building bulletproof balance, so you are not playing catch up in your 80s. I say this so we can start working on this balance and stability and that comes from core exercise! Not crunches, but single-leg exercises.

Can I stand solidly on one foot, can I feel my core engage, my glutes engage, the muscles in my leg’

Your real focus when thinking about falls and working on your balance is wanting to be able to pick yourself up after you fall.  So, you want to be strong enough to do this.

Myth number 4, YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A DUDE!

Omg, I will tell you again! We do not have testosterone in our bodies to do this!! But guess what, if If you did, you sure as hell would know!! So, what you will do is strength train so you are able to get up off the bathroom floor if you fall! Lift a gallon of milk out of your refrigerator. Lift yourself from a seating position without using a standing apparatus. These are all real-life things that I want to be able to do as I age, and I know strength training will help me with this.

Myth number 5, I need to do a ton of Cardio and lose the weight before I lift.

Yes, cardio is important, and I want you to have a healthy heart, but muscle is more metabolically active! Those calories that you want to burn are going to burn for LONGER when you strength train, vs cardio.

Think about it like this. Cardio is like a gas stove, you turn on the gas the flame goes right up. I turn off the gas, the flame goes away. Now strength training is like an electric stove. I turn it on, and I get that burner red hot. I turn it off and I can’t touch that burner because my hand will burn! That is strength training. It takes your body longer to  cool down. This will burn calories AND Fat for as much as 72 hours post-workout!

So that is why it is so important to strength train so that you can burn that fat and calories for longer. Keep things fresh and switch it up to keep it excited!! Try out different lower intensity workouts, higher intensity workouts, and mid-range workouts. And then join me on Instagram‘every Friday for a fat-burning Friday to add to your routine!

Listen, I know times can be challenging right now with money and trying to find weights! Strength training can get expensive if we are trying to do it from our own home, so you have to try and improvise! If you don’t have weights, try filling up old water jugs with sand or cat litter and lift those as your weights. And bodyweight is free! There are so many great exercises to do with your body weight and it’s, not all freaking burpees. But if you aren’t creative, it’s ok!! Hit me up and I can help you make a fast and furious home gym!!

Another option, if you do have time to get out of the house, try a gym like Planet Fitness to get your workouts in. They are inexpensive and you won’t have to buy or make any weights!

This is one thing within my Fit Girl Magic Society is that that one of my guiding principles is that every exercise I give has to have a HOME option! So, you can do it at home or in the gym because I know a lot of you have kids and you are home right now, so you may not be able to scoot out of the house. I got you, don’t worry!!

I hear excuses all of the time when it comes to working out and one of them is that It takes too long to get results.But that really all depends on what you are looking for!

Strength training is like cooking. When you follow the recipe, you are going to get the results you are looking for. So, when you feed your body plenty of protein, lift regularly, and gradually up the weights you lift, results will come. They won’t come Amazon Prime fast, but you will see them happen within a few weeks and that is if 80% of the time you are consistent with everything, diet, workout, etc.

Start light at 3-4 times a week, eat a balanced diet, and make the best food choices and the results will come. But remember, you have to do something consistently to see results.

Another excuse I don’t have time I know, I hear it all the time, I do not have time. Homeschooling, caring for elderly parents, commuting, something that takes up time.

But I am not asking for a 2-hour workout! My workouts are anywhere from 20-60 minutes. That is it, but you can see results working out just  20-30 minutes 3-4 times a week.

One way to get the workout in is to do 3-4 10-minute workouts throughout the day! Jump rope, kettlebell swings, push-ups, wall squat. Those little things add up over time. And put workouts in the calendar and make it like an appointment that you cannot break! You can do this! You have time and you can totally squeeze in 20-30 minutes a day 3-4 times a week! I know you can because you can do anything magic makers!

If you have any questions hit me up! I would love to help you get moving on this! Also in January, I will be starting a strength training challenge and you are hearing it here first!! So, join in with us in this challenge and not only have some accountability but work alongside women going through exactly what you are right now! Join the waitlist right here.

Strength training is what is really going to help to build out muscle, help us when we age to fight that aging process, and help us to look in the mirror and be like Heyyyy how you doing!”’ So grab those weights and get to lifting girl!!!

Hit me up on the socials if this podcast resonated with you or you not believe that strength training is the keyyyy!!

LINKS

Guilt Free Summer Guide https://kimbarnesjefferson.lpages.co/gfsummerv2

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/FabFitSquad

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/

Website: https://kimbarnesjefferson.com/

Podcast:\ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/id1476883661

The post Strength Training Myths Women Over 40 Need To Stop Believing appeared first on Kim Barnes Jefferson.

BUT if you are a cardio person, I am going to talk to you about why strength training is also really important to add into your workout routine.  Plus, I am going to give you some things that you can start to do so that we can really focus on strength training and also why you should start to strength train, like yesterday! 

One of the biggest things about strength training is that it helps to build your muscles and our muscles are metabolically active, which means….. It helps our metabolism!! Our muscles contribute to our metabolism and the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism will be.  [Learn all about what I have to say about your Metabolism in this episode]

The more muscle you have, your metabolism gets faster and then your Basal Metabolic Rate increases as well.  Your Basal Metabolic Rate is the base level of calories your body burns to keep you alive. So lying in bed, blinking your eyes, heart beating, etc. The more muscle I have on my body, the higher that number is and the higher the number means there are more calories we can consume without eating in a caloric access. And this is one of the biggest reasons I wanted to bring up strength training on my most recent podcast because so many people focus on that caloric deficit, but it focuses mainly on food! 

With strength training, it helps to boost your metabolism, it helps you to eat more food, but it also helps you to lose more weight because you are building up your metabolic rate. And listen, the last thing I want to hear is that you don’t want to do strength training because you are going to get toooo big and bulky.. You aren’t going to get too big OR bulky. It is impossible to get big and bulky unless you have an insane amount of testosterone. And STOP using the word TONE when it comes to this! This makes me roll my freaking eyes people!

You WANT TO ADD MUSCLE! MUSCLE is metabolically active, IDK what the hell tone is. All I know is that it is from the 80s and they don’t make it anymore!

I challenge YOU to start lifting heavy for muscle and this is why.

This is a biological fact that once we hit 30, we lose anywhere from 3 to 5% of our muscle every 10 years and that muscle loss speeds up significantly once you hit 75.  So, if you can start to build your muscle bank and lifting to help match or beat what is happening biologically then you are able to do more things as you age.  Strength training helps you to be able to do more things as you get older, it helps you to keep moving, to be able to walk on your own, lift your groceries by yourself, get up and down in the garden.  It keeps your muscles active so that as you age, you can live a good, quality life. 

Strength training also helps to balance your hormones.  For many of us over 40 we may be going through some of those hormonal imbalances and strength training is definitely something that can help us in a natural way combat that.  Insulin and estrogen work together, and they are either going to be burning or building. In excess they are building and telling your body to bring on the fat and store it up.  But when I start to strength train, it helps improve your insulin sensitivity and the more it improves, the more your body is able to send out insulin to break up the sugar, the less likely I am to store that sugar into fat.  We also get HGH, which is a natural fat burner, just by strength training and getting adequate rest. And ONLY comes out at rest, so on top of strength training, you need to make sure you are sleeping!

IF YOU ARE A RUNNER!

I want you to focus more of your strength training on your legs.  Which means you should have a leg day each week, because runners lose on average 4.4 pounds of muscle from their untrained areas, which means their legs!  So, if you are making sure you work on them, you will keep that muscle there.

So why.. WHY is it that I care so much about strength training” 

Because first, it helps you to up your bone density! As a woman we all know that as we age, our bone density goes down. So, when you strength train, the muscle pulls on the bone and this makes the bones stronger.  The stronger your bones are, the less likely you will experience osteoporosis or bone breaks as you age! 

Second, it helps us not to look frail, skinny or fat when we get older!! You want some muscle on our body to fill our skeleton. And if you want that lean sculpted look, you have to lift!  And even now, before you start age, strength training seriously gives us a  better sense of confidence!! You see these results as you work your butt off and you are like HELL YEAH! I feel amazing!

So I challenge you to start lifting weights at least 3 times a week!  I challenge you to  lift weights so that the last 2-3 reps of the 8-12 are challenging with good form. So if you are up for a challenge, I want you to check out my new program and it is all about movement. How do you create quality movement’ So, check it out and let me know when you join! I want you to feel kick ass about yourself and the best way to start is moving and getting into the routine of adding strength training to your schedule!

Of all the things in fitness, weight training is more linear than anything else I can talk about.  It shows every 6-8 weeks so that you can increase the amount of weight you are lifting.  When was the last time you changed your weights”  When was the last time the last 2-3 exercises felt challenging but with good form’  And if you don’t know, pick up heavier weights!  That is the only way to build muscle… by adding heavier weights as you go! You have to continue to challenge your body mama!!

{If being home is a challenge for you right now and you don’t have the ability to get heavier weights, try using water jugs to lift, or add sand to bottles. Find ways to think outside of the box with this.}

Lastly, in order to build good quality muscle, you need to add in good quality protein into your diet. This means that you need to add 20-30 grams of protein to each meal.  And by good quality protein, I mean fish, shellfish, eggs, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, lean animal protein. (but don’t count cheese… cheese is not protein. It is a good fat!!)  Protein is the building blocks of our muscles so need to make sure we are fueling those workouts with protein!  It is so so important!

As you age you want to say yes this totally makes sense, you want to be able to age without issues. My goal for you is to start working on this stuff NOW so that we don’t have to play catchup down the line when a lot of damage has been done.

Let’s be that strong badass that you see in the mirror!!

Let’s be able to lift and thrive well into our golden years!

And I want to help you do all of this and more magic makers!

So grab my latest guide.. It is the over 40 and invincible guide called The Resource Guide to Help You Beat the Mid Life Spread! And let me know how this all sits with you! And if you need more help or more information or any questions reach out to me!! I am here for you! Shoot me an email at hello@kimbarnesjefferson.com and we can chat more about this!  And of course, you can find me on all the socials, so tag me when you get going on those lifting days so I can see how you are killing it!

LINKS

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/FabFitSquad

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/

Website: https://kimbarnesjefferson.com/

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/id1476883661

The post Here’s What Every 40-Something Needs To Know About Strength Training appeared first on Kim Barnes Jefferson.