Episode 52: Why Textbook Fitness Doesn’t Work for Real Bodies with Autumn Halazon

We’re calling out the outdated, fear-based, and sometimes downright harmful approaches that still dominate the fitness and rehab industries.

I’m joined by Autumn Halazon, a personal trainer, Pilates instructor, and founder of Halazon Fitness with over 27 years of experience. From her early days in a full-contact boxing gym to her evolution into fascia-based, intuitive movement coaching, Autumn brings a no-nonsense, whole-body perspective to fitness for women over 40.

We explore how the “textbook form” obsession, aesthetic pressure, and shame-based coaching create pain—not progress. We also unpack how overtraining, instructor ego, and nervous system dysregulation sabotage long-term results for clients…and what to do instead.

Whether you’re a clinician, fitness pro, or just sick of toxic wellness culture, this one’s for you.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why many fitness certifications don’t prepare you for real bodies
• How form obsession and body shaming sneak into even “wellness”-based spaces
• The harmful legacy of ‘knees over toes,’ posterior tilts, and ‘don’t arch your back’
• How exercise intolerance, chronic pain, and burnout are often signs of nervous system dysregulation
• What happens when movement is used as a trauma response
• Why interoception—body awareness—is the real foundation of strength
• How to coach clients who say “I don’t like strength training” (without forcing it)
• Why overcorrecting or over-cueing is harmful

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to TMI Talk with Dr. Mary

00:35 Meet Autumn Halazon: A Fitness Journey

01:19 Challenging Traditional Fitness Norms

03:37 Real-Life Client Experiences

05:02 The Importance of Individualized Training

06:27 Addressing Body Image and Trauma

08:54 Ego and Exercise: A Personal Reflection

11:06 Bridging the Gap Between PT and Fitness

13:23 Empowering Clients Through Education

14:37 Understanding and Teaching Body Awareness

22:47 Healing Relationships with Exercise

27:33 Unlearning Old Fitness Myths

28:31 The Importance of Strength Training

29:49 Motivating Reluctant Clients

31:57 Balancing Self-Love and Discipline

34:03 The Influence of Social Media on Fitness

42:58 The Role of Certifications and Intuition

48:30 The Value of Referrals and Holistic Approaches

50:20 Conclusion and Contact Information

You can learn more about Autumn below:

https://www.halazonfitness.com

If you are a health or movement professional and want to stay in touch with future episodes, webinars, courses, events and more. Subscribe to my email list here

I’ll see you in a week!

Transcript

mary: 0:00

Welcome back to TMI talk with Dr. Mary. This conversation today, we're gonna be calling out some of the outdated fear-based and quite frankly, unrealistic approaches that have dominated the fitness and rehab industry for decades. We dive into why so many traditional certifications and textbooks and fitness models don't actually match the reality of the bodies that we actually work with. And how this mismatch can sometimes subconsciously and unknowingly reinforce pain, shame, and even trauma in our clients. To discuss this, I brought on Autumn Halazon. She's a personal trainer, a Pilates instructor, and the owner of Halazon Fitness with over 27 years in the fitness industry. She began at age 16 in a full contact boxing gym, and later shifted her focus after overcoming hormonal challenges over training and burnout. Autumn has completed extensive continuing education in mobility, biomechanics, and fascial SY systems, including trainings from Tom Myers. She helps women over 40 build strength, balance and body awareness through sustainable intentional movement as part of Halazon Fitness and her Feel Your Core program. In this episode, we're gonna learn why real progress starts by teaching people to trust their bodies, again, not forcing them into textbook perfect forms. How chronic stress, nervous system dysregulation and outdated movement cues such as knees over toes, are sabotaging client results. Why empowering clients to listen to their interception, so their inner body awareness and work with their body instead of against it, which is the future of where rehab and movement are going. How subtle ways the ego, even as clinicians, even myself. It can creep into how we work with clients and how to shift more to an overall healing collaborative approach. How over exercising aesthetic, obsession, and no pain, no gain culture have distorted our industries and how to actually reframe movement for true strength function, and resilience. Whether you're a pt, a Pilates instructor, a personal trainer or rehab clinician, if you're tired of rigid protocols, you want to bridge a gap between fitness and healing and are ready to create sustainable and empowering outcomes for your clients. This episode is a must listen for you, so now we'll get to it.

2:32

Welcome back to TMI talk with Dr. Mary where we dive into non-traditional forms of health that were once labeled as taboo or dismissed as Woo. I'm your host, Dr. Mary. I'm an orthopedic and pelvic floor physical therapist who helps health. Movement and rehab professionals integrate whole body healing by blending the nervous system into traditional biomechanics to maximize patient outcomes. I use a non-traditional approach that has helped thousands of people address the deeper roots of health that often get overlooked in conventional western training. And now we are gonna be starting our next episode.

mary: 3:08

welcome Autumn to the show. I'm excited that you're here. So excited to be here. Thank you. Yes. So we're gonna be talking about calling out some of the BS in the fitness and wellness industry, and then also some unconventional ways that you practice and, and work with your clients as well. I think it's important for us to be having these conversations that think outside of the box to progress us further in our industries. So, well, I am so excited. It's something I. Love to talk about. Yeah. And you know, one of the things that we were chatting about a little bit before is how much are these like common patterns that you see in clients? Because I know that in the physical therapy realm, we look at things just so, just linear, like, oh, I'm gonna look just at the shoulder, I'm gonna look just at the hip. What are some common patterns that you see with, with. Clients and how is that different than what you were trained to do? Well, here's the thing is that you're not really, when you're trained, it depends on what your certification is. And typically in the fitness industry, you're gonna get an overlying like large certification. So whether that's your NASM, your ace, your CSCS, it's something and it's super textbook. So you read a lot of books and then you take a test. But there's a lot of, like, now you're certified, you know, kind of now what? It doesn't really tell you how to work with somebody. It's more so here's a bunch of calculations you will never need to work with a client. Um, and here's a bunch of information that the textbooks are almost behind the times a little bit. So what I would say is really hard is that they may show you a squat and they might tell you like very basic principles of a squat. And they're gonna show you one person doing a squat that one person looks nothing like the people you're gonna train. And so the patterns that I see is that a lot of times people, when they're training someone are trying to make their client look like that textbook example. And instead of looking at the body in front of them and being like, none of us are gonna be that textbook example, and most textbook examples are one type of person. Yeah, the, you were saying like the skinny white people. Skinny white people. Yeah. There aren't curves and. You know what? So then we kind of get to this thought process of, okay, everyone's, you know, and these people, this doesn't exist either, but like everyone's spines should look a certain way and like it's very flat, but their spine isn't flat. In fact, it does have curves. They just maybe don't have that flesh to accentuate what those curves are. So then you go to train somebody who. Say maybe has a little bit more gluteal mass, if you will, has you can say Big butt. Big butt. Okay, there you go. And a smaller waist. Yeah. And all of a sudden you're like, wow, that person's arching their back and I need to make sure that they don't arch their back in their squats. And you're like, so then they, you almost are distorting their backs to look like that textbook. Instead of saying like, okay, well where are their bony landmarks? Where. Are they actually in this? And so oftentimes I think trainers, Pilates instructors, whoever you wanna call it, are then bringing on pain. Oh yeah. Well then it's, then it's reinforcing, especially if you're, you're working with women or people that have been susceptible to the culture of the body image, the body dysmorphia. Right? So then we're almost reinforcing that shame of, oh, your body can't do this. Right? Yeah. And so then they start not trusting their bodies more. And so in that we're kind of reinforcing some trauma onto the, the client as well. Thousand, thousand percent. I had a client who kept telling me she wanted to lose weight. It was somebody I knew for a while. So before I took her on as client, I knew her pretty well as just as a friend. And then when we started working together, she said she really wanted to lose weight and she really wanted to make sure that she was like. Toning up, whatever that is. You know the midsection. I said, okay. She said, I need to do Pilates. Well, here's the thing, just to your point is that this woman had more on her midsection and had a larger chest. Pilates is done on your back, so as soon as you put her on her back. You almost feel it's very hard to move if you can picture larger chest midsection on your back and they're asking somebody to curl head, neck, and shoulders up. To where their, their heads kind of almost into their body and she just kept feeling like she was a failure because she couldn't go into a Pilates class and do it. And I'm like, of course you can't. It's just, it doesn't work for your body frame right now. Doesn't mean we can't get amazing core workout and exercises in, that's just like putting you in probably what? It's the most uncomfortable for you. So again, it is, it's reinforcing, okay, well then I can't do this unless I look a certain way. Uh, because that walking to class, well, how come every other woman in there feels okay doing it? Well, honestly, I feel like a lot of times in these fitness classes, most people don't feel okay and they're, they're literally trying to fit in and watching everybody else. And like, I mean, so many times I see people in workout classes doing like the straight leg flutter kicks. Oh my gosh. That way the amount of people that actually do those right is like maybe 1%. And maybe people they're, they're like, why can't I do it? And so, so many times before I understood this, before I actually knew like. How much this affected my nervous system. Mm-hmm. And even seeing it in in clients or patients. Right. And you're just like, wow, did I reinforce some of these patterns because I subconsciously, mm-hmm. Started comparing everything to the textbook and then also. We're doing what we've learned to do from the people before us. Like how long, how many times did I tell people earlier in my career not to squat knees over toes? Oh my gosh. I just can't, I am so embarrassed of my younger self because it's not like I was doing that shit when I was like, when I am am in squatting to get something up. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's so true. But I think that, like I heard some quote one time talking about how. You should, you should be embarrassed. We, every almost year, we should be embarrassed of what we did the year before.'cause that means that we're growing, we're growing. And I'm like, okay, that makes me feel a little better. Because same how many times you bring up the flutter kick and it's probably one of my least favorite exercises. I it, I hate it. And how many times I do you tell people, okay, put your hands underneath your butt now keep your feet a couple inches from the ground. Yeah. Realizing that. How many people were we putting into back spasms? Like how many people were actually working their core? And it's really funny now to go into classes.'cause I'll take classes and they'll have flutter kicks and I'll bring my legs down to a height where I can maintain, you know, stability into my lower back. And I maintain my low back curves and the instructor comes over and pushes my legs down. Yeah. I hate, I hate that. And I'm like, and I just keep thinking they're well intended instructors who unfortunately were taught percent incorrectly. Well, I, I don't blame the instructors. So when you're listening to this, it's more of getting us to challenge the status quo and, and really helping people from a nervous system perspective. So I don't think it's intentional, right? Like, you know, we're over here saying that we've done it. I mean, I've told people for years. Not to go knees over toes, because that's what we were taught. And the thing that really helped me is I saw an Instagram post where a guy was making fun of this and he was like, if we only hinge at our hips and we only do these things, this is what it would look like. And I remember getting mad with about it, and this is what, before I did like inner work to know what my ego was saying. And um, I sat with it and I was like, he's not wrong. I mean, he's actually really right. And there's this big disconnect from the PT side and the fitness world. I almost feel like in my experience, PTs can help with like acute injuries. Mm-hmm. But. Like the really, really good PTs, they know how to help people move. Mm-hmm. I would agree. Yeah. And, and, and fitness know can teach people how to move, but, but they can't do injuries. So like, we need to be having conversations. I mean, like, yeah. What are, have you seen? What have I seen? And when I was in corporate, I almost felt like there was this, oh my God, it's us versus the personal trainers. It's us versus the Pilates. It's us versus this. And I'm like, ew, just stop. Like. Th we want people to heal. Okay. And, and we heal in community. Yep. And in that. The biggest thing is important if we're all cohesively teaching the same stuff. Where it gets hard is where if I share a client with maybe a chiropractor that tells people not to do certain things, like never to deadlift ever again, or never to squat knees over toes or scaring them into needing adjustments, constantly let people want to come in for adjustments, let people want to come in, show them the value, let's not scare them. So there's a lot of that. As well, like fear in it. But I did wanna go back to the instructor kind of, um, adjusting the movement is, yeah. I don't think they mean to do that, but for many years I had, um, exercise intolerance, so I look strong. Mm-hmm. But they'd be like, lift heavier, lift heavier. And so I do it.'cause I was embarrassed. I was like, I'm a physical therapist, I can do this. And then I'd flare up and then just never come back. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think that happens a lot more to women than you. Think I find that if a woman has good mobility or say is maybe slightly on the, like hyper mobility's like end, they're gonna look really good moving. Mm-hmm. A lot of times they're hanging out in their joints. A lot of times they don't feel anything that they're doing. And the, I think as instructors, again, we're taught to look at a certain thing and then that's what it should look like. And there aren't check-ins. Yeah. Just like in your case of, okay, well where are you feeling? Does this feel good? Do you feel supported? Like anything like that, asking, how did you feel last class? Did it feel good? Mm-hmm. Like, there's none of that. And really putting like the ownership with every one of my clients, I'm like, I actually never want you to come back. I want you to get to the point where you can do it all on your own. I've given you the knowledge I've. Given you the why's. I've given you so much. You've only come for it.'cause it's fun. Like we have fun together and accountability. And so many of my clients that I've taught, maybe 15 years or so, they'll be like, okay, don't say anything this session. And they can say almost everything that I was gonna say and they have, because I'm like putting knowledge back into people to feel their body. Is huge. This, this, this is it. Mm-hmm. What you've essentially said is getting them into their body, starting to trust their intuitive movement. Mm-hmm. Uh, and we call this like, interception is just like, your body is like awareness in your, of your body, like internally and their internal cues. And I find so many times when people are disconnected from their body, it can mean a variety of different ways. It can mean. Potentially that maybe that person is neurodivergent. Mm-hmm. Maybe they have hypermobility or the other thing that I'll see, maybe they don't have those. Um, and then the other thing that I'll see is they're just in chronic fight or flight. And so with that, they're dissociated from their body because the body hasn't been told it's safe. Thousand percent do you find as you're saying this, because it's almost like I find with my clients, I tell'em, I'm like, okay, we're gonna first pull back your range of motion. Yeah. And then we're gonna get really good in that spot and then we're gonna challenge it. Yeah. Um, and, and. I know with you the breath is huge as the breath should be huge for everyone. Do you find sometimes people have a hard time slowing down to really work on that, like baseline kind of, um, the principles where we all a thousand percent. But to me, the key with that is, so when I teach transverse abdominis mm-hmm. I've seen this a lot where people are like, turn on your TA by tilting back. And I'm like, well, if we look at the insertion of the ta right? It wraps, it's, it literally the horizontal fibers that wrap around. So technically there's not. A tilt. Yes. With that, when you tilt, you're, you're activating the rectus abdominis, so you're getting those, those, those muscles to tilt back. Yep. So you're kicking in your rectus and your ta. So there's also that too, where they're like, well, I was told to tilt when I do this. And I'm like, yes. But when we're doing ta you're gonna kick on. You can't isolate muscles. Mm-hmm. You can do the best that you can. But, um, with, with that, the biggest thing to me is teaching people, Hey. This is gonna feel like you're doing nothing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But just trust me, this is the foundation. So the more we can kick on the stabilizers here, so you're transverse and I show them on an anatomy app so they can see it and they go. When they do ta, they only almost feel like they over contract. Mm-hmm. Like, they're like really pulling in and arching their backs and really, really trying. And so I'm like, do 10% of that. And they're like, whoa, what? And I just gentle, gentle movement. Sometimes I'll cue people to kind of, people do, I'd love to hear your cues on TA to kind of see what you do, but I, I'll say like the hip bones. Drawing those hip bones here together, kind of zipping up some Te Snugger. Snugger snug jeans. Yep. Yep. At the end of an exhale. Yep. I use both of those. I'll often say, I want you to cough or laugh. Perfect. Just because a lot of times people have no clue where those muscles are, and I usually use them as lower abdominals because in, in, it's interesting, in the PT world, maybe this is, is like you can use jargon in a way this different than I think in fitness sometimes I found. I have to be really like pelvis. A lot of people don't know where their pelvis is, uhhuh, so it's really specific, like lower abdominals and then I point'em out, this is where your lower abdominals are, and then let's cough or laugh. Mm-hmm. Do you feel those muscles, those muscles are your lower abdominals and then we work on how do you now engage them now that you know where they are and what they are? I actually don't think it's different for PTA. Okay. I actually think from a PT side, we as a general profession, it's, we need to break it down more. Mm. Okay. To help resonate with the client. So I think that that's spot on because pelvis people are like, pelvic, what? Pelvis? What's that? Right? And so, yeah, there you've gotta, we've gotta be careful, like I said, thoracic spine the other day with a patient, he's like, what's that? I was like, oh shit. Sorry. I mean, midback, midback, midback, right? And so there's this piece that's hard from a, a PT perspective of that shifting. So you almost gotta play true. A little bit of mental gymnastics. Yeah. Because. We wanna break it down. So it's, I was with my college girlfriends a few months ago and I was saying something and they were like, wait, say that again. I go, oh, I need to say it in layman's terms. And one of'em goes, don't call me a layman. It's So, my mentor said, you sat in a room for a long time learning all this, and no one cares that you sat here and learned it. They just, it's not about your ego. Yeah. Yes. Well, because it's also about your ego, right? Yeah. So there's like ego and like. Help, like we, I call it higher self or like your best self, whatever you wanna call it, right? And so your ego is gonna be like, oh, if I use big words. I'm a big time person. Yes, that's so true. I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially in the first few years maybe of your career. Oh God, yeah. The amount I, I probably overcompensated if you're a new grad. Hey, just trust that, you know, just, it's not about your ego, it's not as much about us as we actually think it is. Yeah. No, and you know what's so interesting is though like. Covering to the ego and what you said before is that I find from my clients, a lot of it is letting go of the ego. Yes, it is. Like I had a friend who used to always say with an exercise, take the pretty out of it. And it was such a really big thing about it. Like, so when they come into classes I'm like, okay, can you feel, you know, maybe you've been working on a deadlift or something. I'm like, can you feel, you know, glutes engaged, can you feel this, this, this? Yep. And they're like, but you know, my range isn't very big. I don't care. Now, can you go into a class with a bunch of other people who may be doing a really large range of motion and also not care because that's really hard.'cause here's the thing is you may not look like what they're doing, but you know you're doing it right and you're feeling good and you're not gonna get injured and you're feeling safe and protected, whereas you don't, you don't know what's going on there. But it takes a while, I think, as. As you know, for my clients to be okay going into a group space and really dropping that ego and doing what's best for their body. Oh, that resonates so much from like me taking classes too. And, and, and I've seen it with clients as well, just that it's hard to take those classes'cause you wanna keep up with everybody else. The amount of times I've injured myself. Just trying to keep up with, I remember I entered my hip really bad when I was like 26 doing like box jumps.'cause I was trying to compete with like an 18-year-old next to me. I was like, oh, I got this. And I was like, this is so dumb. Why did I like, who did I prove that to? That that 18-year-old never saw me again? Nobody in that class, that gym doesn't exist. Yeah. You know, but my hip hurts. You know, my hip's fine now. But it was just funny'cause that was my first experience with the ego in a workout class where I got injured and I just thought. Oh, okay. This is, this is interesting. But you see it too. Yeah. How to get your clients to, to trust that, hey, this might be too much. And hey, it doesn't, doesn't mean you're weak. It actually means you're strong. It actually means you have courage. Yeah. Yeah. And you can't have courage without being vulnerable about it. Thousand percent. You've gotta put those blinders on. And you also don't know how many of those people in the room have. Either Ben, pt because they didn't listen, have, uh, you know, seen somebody else. Like, I, I will often say,'cause I see, you know, people from different gyms, um, often if I like, know the community type of thing, and I'm like, you don't know that I've seen so many people in the, in your class for certain things. And then I try to teach them, okay. So we know, say maybe it's somebody who has a harder time firing up their, um, transverse abdo, okay. And then we really learn how to fire it up. We understand position into a deadlift. We'll then talking them through, okay, you get this? However, now if we add speed, power choreography, gosh, a bigger range of motion. You're gonna have to bring that focus right back to it, because all of those are gonna challenge it even more so, which means, then it goes into the how do you feel today? Did you sleep last night? Where's your stress level at? Where's your emotional stress level at? Because if you're super stressed, that deadlift, that could turn into a super heavy kettlebell swing. Yeah, you're not doing it today. Yeah, you're at a higher risk of being injured because you, you just nailed your hip hinge, but now you're gonna throw in heavy weight and power and speed. And you're exhausted and you're gonna think that you're gonna be able to control that movement in the same way. It's just, it's not gonna happen. Well, that's why the HRV is so important. I mean, but here's the thing is sometimes those aren't even accurate either. Yeah. But, um, and just looking at getting the patient or the client to understand too, when their body's kind of tapped out, we were like taught, oh, okay, well we're gonna do now, we're gonna progress these six weeks and then day, the six week we're gonna go up to this way. Well, what if that person. Is, is experiencing like a lot of stress that night. Mm-hmm. Or the day before or that week before. There's not this, I was thinking about this the other day when I went to the gym'cause I was like, I can lift heavy when I wanna lift heavy. Mm-hmm. But sometimes when I'm under like change in my life or things like that, there's so much of that where you're just, you have to listen to the body.'cause I know that. On the days that I feel strong, I feel strong. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going heavier. But there are days where it's like I'm just moving. Mm-hmm. Because so much of the fitness industry before is just like, let's look good. Mm-hmm. And that hate made me hate exercise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so, and, and I've seen that with clients too, where they hate exercise. They're like, I don't wanna exercise.'cause it reminds them of this body dysmorphia of all the bullshit that we heard in the nineties with mm-hmm. All the, the movements of getting us skinny and all this stuff. Right. Whatever. And in that we developed an in, I, I still think we're breaking away from it. I don't think we're there yet. Mm-hmm. But there's this still this thing of, well, I work out to burn off what I ate last night. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that if, if we're still saying that, and we're still hearing clients say that, if we're still saying that that's an unhealthy relationship with exercise, that we need to heal. Yes. And so much of the body is like moving. So we know the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system, so our lymph does not flow without muscle contraction. So if you're thinking of it from a perspective of looking good, but not looking at it as, Hey, I'm getting blood flow to my muscles. Yeah, I'm getting the lymphatic drain, the lymph system moving. I'm telling my body I'm safe. Mm-hmm. My heart rate's getting up, I'm releasing energy or built up tension, maybe. Um, I'm getting my oxygen up, so I'm, I'm working my lungs more. Mm-hmm. Right. Yep. That's a different, that's a different energy to go. Totally different into a workout, then I wanna be skinny. And the funny thing about that though is that working out that way. Is actually how people lose weight. Thousand percent. I find people actually lose weight, um, when they start loving themselves of a thousand percent. And what I would say is I'm a big fan of staying in my, you know, my lane when it comes to fitness. So if I do notice somebody who has a distorted, you know. Version of working out or eating. And I'm not really gonna necessarily like food for sure. I'm not tapping into, I'm gonna refer them out. But what I will do a lot is ask the whys and keep bringing the whys back because Are you working out? Because some kind I have, they're working out because they need to get out of the brain. Okay, well, why? Like, and we get kind of down to it. Some of them, well, I'm doing this because from a young child, my mother talked about her weight. You really get to understand somebody. And to me then you get to understand how their workouts are shaped. Because if you can get somebody to realize, and again, this is not my job, to then go, okay, let's work on healing that inner child. Let me refer you to someone, but I can understand this is coming from childhood. So how can I shape workouts that are gonna feel a little bit more comfortable for that person? Because what we, we do realize, at least for me, is when I look at clients that have a tough relationship with movement or food, um, not food so much'cause I just, I don't work with that at all. But movement in particular. Is that I don't wanna just pull the rug out from underneath them. Mm-hmm. Like if they're used to working out three hours a day, I'm not gonna say you need to stop because that three hours a day is probably holding them together in some way. But when we can figure out, okay, well the why is because you gotta get outta your head. Okay. I'm all for you getting outta your head in a movement shaped version. But instead of beating ourselves up, can we go on a walk? Can we listen to a podcast? Can we, you know, like, yeah, you can still move. You know, I, my husband's one of those. He's like, I gotta move seven days a week. Awesome. Okay. When I met him, those seven days a week we're really hard. Seven days a week. He now. Nope. He recognizes he needs sleep more. There's some days he just goes on a walk, uh, because I get, we wanna clear our head and that constant, I need to pound myself into the ground. That's a really hard one That's not gonna end well from. Gosh, as you know, from the joint perspective to the hormone perspective, to the so many different ways. Well, because we're, we're seeing this, I work with a lot of women or people in perimenopause or menopause, and in that. We're having to untrain some of these patterns, right? So that's, that age group is, is more like millennials or like Gen X. Mm-hmm. And so we've been susceptible to the nineties of all of, Hey, low fat cardio is how you lose weight. Mm-hmm. We actually know now it's the opposite. Right? Yep. So I had, I did a podcast on estrogen dominance and one of the things that she was talking about is how much, uh, progesterone is made. It's a interesting, it starts from cholesterol. So if we're not eating fat, it, it's this breakdown. Interesting. And, and how much of the people in the nineties that were going through perimenopause not eating fat, do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. They were probably so rage that they had that cardio. Yes. So then yeah, they're doing cardio. Oh, that's making it worse. Without strength training. Yeah. And and there's so much right now and everybody needs to strength every protein, protein, protein. I'm like just, oh my gosh. Can we chill out for five seconds? I get it. Yeah, it's great. We're on this pendulum to the opposite side now and I'm like, let's, let's even this out. But in that, when you're doing so much cardio, you're pushing your body, your body starts thinking you're under fight or flight again, which then when you are under fight or flight, your body produces cortisol in lieu or more cortisol over progesterone. Oh my God. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. It's just we're getting hit double whammy. Wow. Yeah, so, so there's this, there's this balance. But here's also too, here's the thing, there's a lot of people that don't wanna do strength training. It's a lot. Mm-hmm. And so we have to meet people where they're at. Well, you could still like doing stuff around the house, squats and movement like that. How do you get somebody who maybe doesn't wanna strength train? To, to do it because yes, we know, we know logically muscle mass helps longevity. Mm-hmm. We know it helps with blood sugar regulation. We know that, um, that it helps with bone density. Right? Yeah. And so it also helps with metabolism. And so, but. If somebody doesn't wanna do it, they're not gonna do it. I laughed when you said that because I've just changed my approach to something I never, ever, ever thought that I would do. I've always said to people, this needs to be fun and it needs to work on your schedule and it needs to be sustainable. And I still believe a lot of those, and just recently, one of my best friends, I said to her, I don't care that you don't like strength training. I don't care. Do you wanna play with your grandkids?'cause she has 20-year-old, 20 mid twenties kids. She said yes, and I said, we need to get you strong. What I can tell you is you don't need to be in the gym four or five days a week, two days, 30 minutes. Can you give me that to give yourself strength and that life you want? She's a thousand percent. I don't care if I don't like it. So I think sometimes I will meet someone always where they're at. And I'll always say to people, as adults, we have to do things we don't wanna do all day long. Yeah. So to me, if someone says they don't like an exercise, I'm like, great. Done. We can take it out. Like there's so many exercises, I can get whatever done through, you know, like whatever I need to get done for them to get stronger, we can do it with such different way. And I think sometimes asking people, this is something my therapist actually said to me. He was like, well, what do you want? And when I said, you know, whatever it is, because a lot of people will say,'cause I wanna feel stronger. I wanna be stronger when I get older. I. Okay. Then you do want to strength train. It doesn't have to be heavy, heavy lifting. It doesn't have to look like the picture in your head. It doesn't have to be CrossFit. I think they think of CrossFit. It doesn't have to be CrossFit. Yeah. But we can get you stronger in a way that I'm not telling you you're gonna enjoy it, like you like to go out with your girlfriends, but you won't fear it and you won't hate it. That is what I can give you. Yeah. And so that involves a lot of talking to find out too. Like, well, what is it that you don't like? Is it because you did take a class that was CrossFit or an instructor made you do an exercise to look a certain way and it felt really bad in your body? I can make sure those things don't happen. And if you want to be stronger, we do need to get you stronger. Like I love that because I think it's, it's the why behind it, right? Yeah. So maybe they're not motivated'cause they don't love it. I know, I feel like I've almost gone. In the past or even just even just like a year ago even to like, let's just do what your body wants to do. And it's like, well, there's some stuff we got. So the pendulum right? There's some stuff that we know can be helpful and we know can really help people, right? Like if somebody doesn't wanna drink water, I'm sorry, we have to still drink water. So what can we do to help you drink water? Right, exactly. So there's some foundational things and maybe if somebody's not wanting to do something, like you said, let's shift it. Well, what is your goal? Do you wanna be able to get up and off? Up and down off the ground with your kids. Do you want to go strong into menopause? Do you want to do these things? Right? And so like for me, sometimes I don't like strength training, but I'm like, I am going into perimenopause strong. I'm going into with muscle mass because I know that's gonna help regulate my blood sugar and that's gonna help my hormones percent. And so, and then we can kind of translate that too into, into our clients or patients. And I think that. I love that approach because here's the thing, there's also like this whole movement of self-love and I'm all about it. Mm-hmm. But. You can also go way too far. Everything's a pendulum. So if you just never do anything that you don't wanna do, first of all, that's a privilege. Um, second of all, we have to do things that we don't wanna do sometimes. Mm-hmm. Right? And so how can we reframe it? Yeah. Into a way that is motivating for somebody, right? Like, I don't necessarily love running, but I know how much it helps my cardio and I, how much it helps my lungs. And so I don't do a ton of it, but I still. I'm doing it'cause I can picture my lungs expanding and contracting and like helping, helping with that and making sure, so when I do wanna do certain activities, like maybe next time I travel I can hike without worrying about the cardio aspect. And then, um. It's just, yeah, it's just important to look at all these things, but I really like that perspective, and I think it's all a pendulum. It's all a pendulum. It's all kind of sometimes a reframe. And look, I think as a fitness wellness industry, we did a really poor job for a long time. If you think about it, it was, I remember I would always travel and take the hardest class in whatever city because I always. Thought, oh, I wanna see this, that, that makes you so much stronger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And um, the funniest one I ever took was in London. It was deemed the hardest class in London. And what marketing is that? Right? It's like, well, one, you're like, usually you have a PR firm that whatever, that you're getting that the award. But also I went into the class and they were like, okay, for seven minutes we're gonna do burpees. Now we're gonna do this. And. I tell my clients, I'm like, it's really easy to destroy you. It's really easy to make it really hard. It's really hard, or it just takes thought for a trainer to program workouts that continue to help you feel better and better. And I mean, we did an awful job. We wanted. Uh, the PR of fitness was like, how hard can it be? How much can you burn? How sore can you be? Like those were were can you destroy yourself? Yes. Basically. So that's why winning the award. But I think that's why like I'd say people around like 40 and up right now, especially women or people going into perimenopause, they have this resistance to strength training.'cause the whole thing was like, I don't wanna get. I don't wanna get bulky. Mm-hmm. I don't. Um, and then I also, it looks scary. Mm-hmm. And, and, and what we've seen on the media are just like these intense, crazy workouts. And I'm like, what are you training for? Where are you going? Are you in the military? Yes. If you're not in the military, what are you doing? Well then there's also, there's also this piece too, of over exercising as a trauma response. Mm-hmm. Oh, interesting. Not knowing how to regulate and understand what's coming up. So it's, it can be become addiction. Yeah. No, just like anything else, a thousand percent can become an addiction. Mm-hmm. And so if you see somebody obsessively doing it, that's probably a sign. And if we're doing it ourselves, it's probably a sign. What, what's causing us to obsess about this? Because movement can be really great, but then again, a pendulum, right? It can go to the other side where it can be borderline unhealthy, just like anything. Yep. Yep. And so when, when we feel kind of this trigger or this response, um, you can talk about it with a therapist, you're just sitting, sitting down and understanding where is this coming from? Why do I feel this urge to do this? Like how am I training for something? If not, yeah, why this impulsiveness? So any of these like big, big extreme things of anything, right? It's like binge eating and then not eating at all. So like what's the in between? I think so too. And it's the attachment to it. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Can you let it go? Mm-hmm. For a few days? And will you be okay? Well, I also think that there's this theory too, that if you look fit, you're healthy. But yeah, if you're screaming and you have road rage all the time, or you're constantly in a rush and just frazzled, is that health too? No. And also. If we can stop on that. The, uh, the amount of times I, I don't know if you get this, that I have women talking about abdominals and how they really want to train their apps, they wanna get strong apps and how they're not strong. And there's so many women that I say there's a lot. I'd say the abdominals are definitely underworked thousand percent. I have a lot of clients and I'm like, you are really strong. They're like, I don't have abs. I'm like describing, especially to women how having abs. Does not equate to being strong. Yeah. And then what goes into play? Like what I wish if, you know, we spoke about the influencer world, I wish so many people on there that looked really fit. Could also credit genetics like. The amount of women to show their abdominals where their hormones would sit. Just to, I, I say that to clients all the time. I'm like, here's the thing is we'd probably take a lot of pleasure outta your life too. And then two, your hormones may get destroyed in order for you to have this look of what you see as being healthy. Oh, yeah. I've, I've had a friend, um, I've had many friends where they're just look jacked all the time. Yeah. And they don't work out that much. And that's genetics. And it's really hard for women to get six packs. I mean, because so hard. We carry more visceral fat in general. Also, we have hormone fluctuations as well. And in order to get that, if you're not genetically inclined to it, you have to really cut out a lot outta your diet. And that can almost feed more of an eating disorder as well. So we have to look at it from this perspective of like, Hey. Is this, is this health? Does this feel good? Because I know I can get a, like I have good, I have decent genetics. Yeah. Like I can maintain muscle mass. Mm-hmm. I've been weightlifting on and off since like high school. Mm-hmm. But I still have like good genetics. Like I'll fully admit like that's, that's part of it. But I'm also not like super jacked and ripped because I also. I know what that takes to get to that point, and it will cause me to flare up in a body, dis some type of eating issue, some type of eating, and I don't wanna, I don't wanna fuck with that. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And so, but it, that's also in consider too, when you see people in there, how much are they restricting? How much of that is an eating disorder? Mm-hmm. How much of that is, is, is genetics? Mm-hmm. And how much of it is. What they're doing. I mean, it's, it's hard to know, but I I love that you called that out though.'cause the influencer world, it's just, it's getting hard sometimes to go to the gym because everything is just all about videos and these outfits and like, you know, showing off our bodies and all these things and hey, I am all about people being proud, but there's also this point where it can, it can affect other people around that maybe are struggling with their body image. It. And when that's your only job, it's Okay, well, what all goes into play? Do you have someone cooking for you? A lot of times, shockingly, the people who are showing you workouts actually aren't doing those. They're not doing the workouts they're showing you. And if they are, how many hours on top of that are they working out, which. For, I'm not saying everyone, but for a lot of people it's a lot of working out. Um, and then I look at it and I say, okay, you can have three things in life. You can have your hormones, you can have performance, you can have aesthetics. I wasn't the one that created this. I had somebody a long while tell me that. And they said, you can't have all three optimally at once. And it was very true. So if you're seeing somebody whose aesthetics, you're like, wow, okay. Are the other two optimized you? Yeah. You don't know by somebody's, looks like you really do not know. Do not know. And um, well, it goes, it goes back to, you know, some of the BS like in the wellness industry. And like you've said, like they're probably not doing some of those exercises. And I've seen this in healthcare too, where they'll tell people, even in functional medicine and physical therapy, they'll tell people, do your breath work, do these things, but they're not doing them themselves. Yeah. And that provides a different energy when you come in with that energy because if you're not grounded in your space, if you are not centered and you don't know, you don't practice breath work and you don't practice mindfulness to tell somebody else that is hypocrisy to, I completely agree. Yep. Yeah, and a lot of the people in the, I think in the social media space, they're not working with people. Like so they're telling you it, but you're right. Like if you came into a space with somebody, like if I came and walked in with you, I know I can feel your authenticity. I can feel, you know everything that you're saying. Okay. It's something that you practice. Try to practice yourself. I. If you just post a video, you don't really, you don't know. And so then we do, we instead just go into the spiral of what somebody looks like or what they're showing for that, what, 30 seconds? Millisecond. Millisecond. It's so, and you've seen, and I'm sure you've seen it, where people are so different on camera than off. And so there's, there's that thing and that, well, that, and that goes to one of the biggest things that we were also talking about too, is when you take these. Continuing education, or you take these courses or you learn these programs, let's stop taking them blindly at face value because there's always gonna be a newer trend. There's gonna be a newer approach. You are so unique in yourself that it's so important that you, you filter it through your lens. That person that came up with that protocol, they did it based on their lens from somebody else. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. And, and I, I feel like that, I don't know if it's like that in your world, but in the physical therapy world, I'll see new grads just be like, oh, I didn't learn that or this. I'm like, well, what intuitively do you feel feels right for this person? Because it's gonna adjust based on each individual person. So giving yourself that permission to adjust things based on what you feel fit. And maybe you, maybe you align with what one of the, the people leading the certification program say, maybe you leave another piece out. So do you see that? I see it a ton. And here's the thing is like every state is different. So whether or not you need in your state a certification, some states you don't even need a certification, which is kind of frightening rhythms. Yeah. It is these big certs and there really isn't a whole lot of good, like they do. They show you, here's a squat, here's a deadlift. But there isn't a lot of depth to them. But what I would encourage people to do is like, you get your, your main cert, okay? That's gonna get you in the door places. But then what speaks to you? Is it something, is it a breath work class? Because you know, that's the foundation of all movement. Is it a, you know, some classes I've taken are, you know, like maybe like a fascia class or something else. Go, then take these classes. Now here's the problem because it is wonderful, you know, it's a, it's a business. Is that under each one of these certifications, here are their pre-approved classes that you can take? I have yet to, I've. Very rarely, I'm gonna say I haven't, but I'm sure I did in my past, took one of their pre-approved classes. I went in and took what. I resonated with like, what did I wanna learn more about in my body? Because as soon as you feel it and see it in yours, you'll see it in everyone. It changes. This is why it's so important that we practice this ourselves so much.'cause then you see things that you're like, I never saw it. And then your intuition, which is really learned experiences, starts to grow. And then you petition for credit. Because I have, and again, I'm gonna say I've never, maybe it's happened once. I really can't remember. Um. Had them say no to petitioning, because if they go, it's a reputable company, you know, it's somebody like that's teaching a really great shoulder workshop and you have shoulder pain. So you go to it, they're gonna say yes to it. You just, it takes you a little more work to do and you'll be such a better instructor, coach, trainer, whatever you wanna call it in the end. Yeah, yeah. And it's not, I mean, the certification programs can be wonderful. Yeah. I mean, they can be great. They also. You know, these are, these are things that people have made themselves, so it's not stopping you or anybody else from doing it yourself as well. Um, I think that I used to just blindly trust everybody and just say, oh, this is fact. And then I started realizing, well, um, like when I took my first dry needling course, they were like, just keep needling it until the muscle stopped and. I did that with people and they were all flaring up and I was like, well, I'm not, I'm just gonna go in, let me get a couple twitches and call it a day.'cause when I'm needled like that, I'm like, I'm not going back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what's the maximum benefit with the least amount of pain? Mm-hmm. And I see this too, with like deep tissue work where people are like, I'm gonna beat the shit outta that muscle. I'm like, this person is already traumatized and we're like traumatizing them. So the muscle, the whole body's gonna tense. Mm-hmm. I've never understood those really deep, deep, deep tissue work that doesn't incorporate breath, that doesn't incorporate, it's just, just for pain. I don't get'em either. I had a really great practitioner once say to me, and I loved this, he said, three minutes. You spend three minutes on a spot. It shouldn't take your breath away. If it, it does, it's too deep. Spend three minutes. Get off of it because you know what, if you spend longer and you do get it to release, it may have held your whole system up. And it was so true. And when I talked to my clients, they're like, I've had a massage where they spent 20 minutes on something and the next day I couldn't walk. Yeah. Because like you said, sometimes there's like, there's a reason it's not releasing. There is a reason. Yeah. Yeah. And we don't know. And if you don't understand the fascial system and how that's all connected. It. It can, yeah, you can kind of free up one spot and then everything else kind of starts getting flared up with it. But I think that, yeah, that's exactly it. And more is not better. And you're seeing this trend back. Yeah. Where, and then I almost feel like we're gonna go in this opposite direction of just like too soft. And I'm like, let's go in between. Right. You've got the masculine and fit. We're so far masculine energy in fitness. I'm like, let's bring it. Centered. Mm-hmm. Not all the way over here, just centered. Right. You can still push people, they can still do hard workouts, but maybe they don't do them every day. Maybe we meet them where they're at, but. In summary of what we talked about today is yeah. Meeting, meeting the, the client where they're at, looking at their body, their tissue. Mm-hmm. And their body's gonna respond differently than somebody else. And where we learn a lot of this is literally through textbooks, which are real thin white people. Yep. They all look the same. I've never actually seen textbook in my 14 years of being a physical therapist, I've, I think I've mainly only had like one or two textbook cases. Mm-hmm. And so, so much of this. Is what I'm getting at is teaching people how to trust their intuition as a, as a, as a healthcare or fitness or, or movement professional. Because so much of that is, is important. It really is. So, and I would say on to add to that is that. Uh, don't be scared to refer out and say you don't know. So for me, if a client, if we're hitting a brick wall, yeah, I know. Okay. It's something maybe with your nervous system, maybe a somatic healer will help. Maybe someone who does. I refer out all the time because to me, I'm like, okay, I, I want this person just feel their best. The more hands on the, the better. And so I have a, a group of people that I am like, okay, I think this person would be great. I think this person would be great because this, we've hit a point where there's something else going on and. I can sit here and have you do side leg lifts all day long. We're not getting, we're not gonna get it anywhere. However, maybe if you saw a breath work coach or a, yeah. Somebody else, it's gonna help unlock something and then we're gonna be able to get a little bit further. Yeah, it's, it doesn't mean you're a bad. Professional. It, it means you're, you know, your lane and you're, you're wondering what's going on. I will say that a lot of clients that come see us, they've already been to most people in the western medicine field, so I'll start getting them to be like, Hey, can you go into acupuncture? Are you working with a therapist? And sometimes people. They can be resistant to it. Mm-hmm. But also getting in another person from maybe a different perspective than they've had. You know, I have just having people come in and explaining, hey, you know, maybe eastern medicine along those lines can help. So I think acupuncture's like a good and nice cohesive piece to add into the physical therapy realm.'cause it helps them. Work with their meridians and help with the energy flow so that way they can feel, feel better, but. This was such a great conversation. Thank you. I hope, I think a lot of people will benefit from this to know that we're all doing the best that we can. None of us got instructions on this Earth. No. And the instructions that we got were from other people who have been trying to figure this out. And then institutionalized like education, you know that we start there with physical therapy, right? Uh, but then all these other things, all the things that I've learned is just. Self-learn through experiencing it yourself. Right? Go through these movements, go through these practices and see how you feel. But, and, um, how can they reach you if, um, they'd like to contact you? I am on social media. I have to think, I'm on Instagram. I can pull it up. I can tag it in the bottom if you don't know your, and then have a YouTube channel. Okay. My girlfriend and I created a YouTube channel. It's Feel Your Core. Okay. And basically it's all of what we talked about is that. We recognize exactly this need and how the textbook exactly what we talked about, and we teach how you feel your body and how to move while feeling your body. And so we have tons of classes and things up on. I love that on YouTube. Cool. I'll tag that too. So thank you so much. Thank you.

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Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. It would be a huge help if you could subscribe and rate the podcast. It helps us reach more people and make a bigger impact. I would also love it if you could join my email list, which is LinkedIn, the caption for podcast updates, upcoming offers and events. You can also find me on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram at Dr. Mary pt. Thanks again.