Want to Get Stronger? Do this one thing......

In this episode, I share the one mindset shift that helped me finally get stronger in my 40s. For years, I held myself back with the thought, “I don’t want to hurt myself.” I break down how this belief keeps so many women stuck, why avoiding challenge actually increases our risk of injury as we age, and what changed for me when I finally let go of that fear.

I also share the conversations with my son, my husband, and even insights from big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton that completely transformed how I think about strength, aging, and discomfort. This episode will inspire you to push yourself, lift heavier, and trust your ability to adapt and grow.

What I Cover

• The surprising research on muscle loss in women as we age
• The real thought that stops most women from getting stronger
• How lifting heavier (and allowing discomfort) changed my strength quickly
• Why occasional injury is part of growth—not a sign to stop
• How I balance pushing myself with listening to my body

Key Takeaway

If you want to get stronger, you must shift the thoughts that are keeping you comfortable. Building strength requires mental courage, physical challenge, and a willingness to experience small setbacks along the way. You can become stronger than you think—at any age.

Interested in speaking with me about how we can work together? Click here to head to my website: https://www.modernbodymodernlife.com/ and schedule a free consultation with me.

Transcript

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Bob, welcome to modern body, modern life, the podcast for women who want to feel powerful, healthy, strong and confident, inside and out at every age. On this podcast, we talk about becoming a woman who is fully in control of her eating and movement, so weight loss, strength and energy become permanent. We also talk about something bigger, becoming the woman who takes her deepest desire seriously and goes after more in every area of her life. I'm body and life coach Courtney Gray, and I believe you can get in the best shape of your life at any age, and when you do, it becomes a catalyst for everything else, your relationships, your confidence, your joy, because when you feel like you and your body, all of life gets better. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast. Episode 106, want to get stronger. Do this one thing this podcast is one that I needed to hear a few years ago, and so I'm creating it for you, and I'm creating it like as a love letter to my past self. I know many of my clients also need to hear this podcast, because we've been coaching a lot on this topic, and so it's possible also you might need to hear this. And when I'm talking about strength, of course, I love talking about physical strength and mental strength. I mean, it always starts with our mindset, our mental strength. That's what leads us to anything else is the mindset. But in this podcast, I'm really going to be talking about you wanting to get physically stronger, building more muscle, feeling stronger up, leveling your health in the way of strength. It is possible for you to feel better inside and out, and age well, and strength is a big part of this. I follow a lot of other podcasts and a lot of doctors online, and I am always hearing about how important it is as women, midlife and beyond, that we gain strength because we are losing strength, losing muscle mass every year, I'm flooded with this because it's such a big part of my life, but you might not be. So I want to throw some statistics at you. A little Google search will give you tons of research that has been done on this. But here is, in summary, what we know right now about strength and specifically women. Okay, there is a study from the Cleveland Clinic where it talked about muscle mass decline begins in the 30s and 40s at about three to 5% per decade, with more rapid decline after 60. Now you might hear like three to 5% per decade. It might not sound like a lot. It might be like, Oh, it's no big deal. But yet, there's more rapid decline as we age. Also, other studies I found talked about how women generally have a lower baseline of muscle mass compared to men. I think we all know this, so losses may be relatively more impactful in terms of the way we live on a day to day basis. We also, as women, have hormonal changes. We have like decline in estrogen, changes in our growth hormone, lower of testosterone around menopause, and this might also accelerate muscle loss as we grow older. And then muscle strength, not just muscle mass, matters a lot. I actually didn't know this. This this is this is why doing these podcasts and research is so fun for me, is muscle strength, not just mass. Really matters a lot. A lot of strength has associations with disability and falls more than just muscle mass alone, like your muscles when it comes to falling and being able to catch ourselves and be able to move as we age, muscle strength is really important. And one study that I don't have here, I remember it talked about how important grip strength is to overall health. They did a study with men and women as they aged, and it was their longevity and their health was directly related to their grip strength. It's just fascinating. There's so much fascinating research out there, and all the research points to, if you're not using it, you're losing it in every area, and specifically we're talking about strength. And I don't know about you, when I hear all this, I think I want to be gaining strength, and I can say I am stronger than I've ever been. I was telling one of my friends the other day. He's a trainer and a coach. I was telling him that I'm doing the hip thrust machine, and I can do 160 pounds. And some of you, if you lift a lot of weights, you might hear that and go, Oh, that's not a lot. I do more. That's totally fine. Some of you might be like, I don't even know what that is. And some of you might be like, Oh, well done. We're all different. But he was pretty impressed, which made me happy. And he's like, Yeah, to be able to hip thrust more than your weight is a big deal. That's really awesome. It made me feel so good. And so, how do we do this? How do we get more strength, right? The information is there. I just gave you a bunch of information, and a lot of you were like, Courtney, I know this. I. Know that I need to be getting stronger, but what is stopping you from either getting started or maybe gaining more strength, lifting heavier or maybe trying something new, right? Doing some maybe you've been a swimmer, maybe you do been doing yoga, maybe you've been walking, and you're like, Oh, this is good, but I have a next level. What is keeping you from going to your next level? And always, it's mindset. In order to get stronger, physically, you have to get stronger mentally. What is the one thing you must do if you want to gain muscle, to gain strength, to live out starting today for the rest of your life, healthier, more joyful, more energetic, feeling proud of yourself and feeling stronger is you must uncover the thoughts that are keeping you where you are now, uncover the thoughts that are not having you. Go to your next level, the thoughts at a very basic level, the thoughts of I know I need to get stronger, but I keep not doing it. Why? You need to uncover those thoughts. This is what we do in my coaching program. And then you need to decide what you want to think on purpose. So it's two things. There are some thoughts and possibly discomfort and emotions getting in the way. And then we need to think, what do we want to think on purpose, and what do we want to feel on purpose? One of the most common thoughts that is keeping women in midlife and beyond from gaining strength is this. And this is kind of this is the one thought that I've heard so many times that I used to say, even a few years ago, I used to to have this thought. I didn't say the thought. Actually, sometimes I did say the thought, but I had the thought in my mind. And it might be the thought you're thinking, and I hope it is, because then you're gonna be like, Oh my God, she's reading my mind. The thought that is keeping so many people from gaining more strength is, I might get hurt. I don't want to hurt myself. The biggest thought in the industry is that women are like, I don't want to get bulky. But I think that we're intelligent enough to know now that that's really not going to happen. If you've been walking, maybe running a little bit, maybe you have five pound hand weights, I think that you know, know that you're not getting bulky. Getting bulky is so hard to do. I'm trying to do it right now. It is so hard to do. So I think that the thought I don't want to hurt myself, I'm worried I'm going to injure myself. I'm worried I'm going to do too much, is so common. And again, this is the podcast that I needed a few years ago. And I told a story before in the podcast. When I'm going to tell it again, I'm sure I'll say it in a new way. Sometimes I lift weights at home, especially when it's for upper body, when it's for lower body, I don't really have heavy enough weight, so I go to the gym. But sometimes, if I only have an hour, an hour and a half in between clients, I will go in my bedroom, and I will lift weights for my upper body. And I had just had a conversation with my son, who is a d1 wrestler. He is the strongest out of all of us in my family, and he takes his health very seriously. He doesn't drink. He eats amazing, you know, he indulges once in a while, but he's very mindful about when he indulges all the things. And I said to him, I go, Gosh, I'm frustrated. I feel like I I feel like I've been at the same strength, lifting, the same weights, looking the same for years. And he said, Yeah, you're not lifting heavy enough. And I said, Well, no, I'm lifting heavier now, but, but I just am still not seeing results. And he's like, Mom, you're probably not lifting heavy enough, and you might not be getting enough protein, but we can talk about protein later. And he goes, but what are you lifting? And I'm like, No, I'm lifting heavy. I'm lifting this. I'm doing 20 pounds overhead press, I'm doing all these things. And he goes, Yeah, it's probably not heavy enough. And I'm like, no, no, no, you know, I think I'm doing fine. And I kind of discounted his his expertise in the moment, he's my child, for God's sakes, I know best, right? So a few days later, I was in my bedroom, and I was lifting weights, and he came in to ask me a question, and he walked in and looked at me and said, Oh yeah, you're not lifting heavy. And he saw me lifting weights. I said, you're not lifting heavy enough. And I said, no, like, this is really hard for me. And he goes, Mom, and he says, I'm telling you, if you want to see more muscular arms, you need to lift heavier. He goes, how many reps are you doing? I said, I'm doing eight. And he goes, bump it up a few pounds and try to get to five. And I said, Ryan, I just don't want to hurt myself. There it is, my friends. And this is the power of coaching. In a sense, he was coaching me in this moment. Sometimes it takes a while to get to these limiting thoughts, these limiting beliefs that are keeping us stuck. I just don't want to hurt myself. And he said to me, and he goes, but you've been to physical therapy over the last few years a few years a few times and you've hurted yourself, and you're fine. And I go, yeah. And he goes, so if you actually started lifting heavier and you hurt yourself, what would you do? And I said, Well, I would just go back to my physical therapist. And he goes, Yeah, but in the process, you, first of all, you might not hurt yourself. And he goes, but. In the process, you might be gaining strength. And then after that physical therapy, after the 12 weeks, or whatever it is, you would keep going, and you would get stronger and stronger and stronger. And he had me there, I said, I at this point, I was like, okay, you know what? I'm going to allow you to be the expert. Okay, I'm going to do it. And I started doing it that day. I actually had to go and buy some new weights because I didn't have, I didn't have the next level up weight to be able to lift. And I started lifting heavier, and only getting about five reps in, and I started gaining strength. And I'll tell you very quickly, I saw a difference in my arms, like within a few weeks, I saw a difference in my arms, and I felt a difference in my strength, and it blew my mind. And he had been telling me this for a long time, my friend, so I want to tell you another story. Around this same time, I had another injury. It was, it wasn't an injury I was going to physical therapy for, but I can't remember what it was. It was, maybe it was my calf or something. I had some little injury. And I was, I was venting to my husband, and my husband said something that, you know, sometimes when someone says something to you, it like cracks open your mind. He said something to the effect of, yeah, something is always going to be hurting as we age. He goes. When we were young, nothing hurt. You could even fall and get up, and it was no problem. He goes. But as we age, something is always going to be hurting. You just need to work around it. And it was gospel. It was such good advice. Because, remember, I had this belief that I didn't want to injure myself. It's like I was so injury avert, averted aversion. I had an aversion to injury. And so then around this same time, I was looking at one of the books we have on our coffee table. We have this beautiful book. I don't know if you know who LAIRD HAMILTON is. If you're one of my younger listeners, you might not know who he is, but if you're my agent up, you might know who he is. He is a big wave surfer. He has this beautiful book. It's quite old now, but it's called force of nature. We just love LAIRD HAMILTON, my husband surfs. I don't I'm too scared of sharks, but my husband loves to surf, and so I bought him this book for his birthday one year, and I was reading through it. It's just a beautiful book. It talks about different areas he surfed, and it's just a really cool book. And he's very inspiring, him and his wife. He's married to Gabrielle Reese. I don't know if you know if you know who that is. She was a volleyball player and a model. So anyways, I'm looking through this book a few years ago, and I all of a sudden, I come on to this one section where he starts, starts talking about his injuries, and it literally says, These are a lot of his injury. This is like not even half of his injuries. But he lists all these injuries throughout his time of being a big wave surfer, broken ear drum cuts. It even says lots of cuts. I'm the cut King. Boxers, fractures. I don't even know what that means, broken and misplaced ribs, stitches. I've had about over 1000 stitches a surfboard, to the femur, punctures from surfboards, chipped elbow, herniated disc, torn ACL, I'm not going to go into it. He lists tons of them. And I remember thinking, here is this guy who is the peak of his health and wellness, and now I don't even know how old he is. I got to think that he's at least 55 he could be older, and this book was written a long time ago, and he is at the peak of his wellness even now. He eats good. He still is working out and surfing, and he's just living a life I think a lot of us would look at and go, Wow, that would be amazing to be in that shape. And his wife is the same thing, but he had all those injuries. What if he would have had the thought, I don't want to hurt myself. He would not be at the health he is at today. Now, for some reason, we women, especially those of us midlife and beyond, have this thought on repeat, I don't want to hurt myself. I don't want to injure myself, but what if it was actually okay that we knew in order to get in our best strength, in order to get in our best health, we are probably going to injure ourselves along the way. What if that's okay? And this is when I when I went through this with my son, and then my husband saying that to me, and then reading this LAIRD HAMILTON book. And then there was one other thing that happened, I think I've also I think I've also talked about this on the podcast, where I went to the gym one day and I had an injury, and I remember one of my friends moms was there, and she literally had her arm in a sling, and she had had, like, rotator cuff surgery. And I was like, What? What is happening? And she was such an inspiration to me in that moment here. She had had surgery, and she's still coming to the gym to work on her lower body strength. Her mindset is dialed. She has accepted the fact that she's going to be injured along the way. But here is what I want you to hear. And rewind it if you need to hear it more than one time, if you're thinking some flavor of i. Might get hurt. I don't want to hurt myself. If that is keeping you from gaining strength, you are actually putting yourself in danger of injury the older you get. Because if you go Year and Year and Year, losing strength, not gaining strength, you are going to get injured. You are definitely going to fall and not recover from that fall well, so that thought that I might injure myself is actually going to end up injuring you. So I'm so grateful that my thoughts on this really changed during that time in my life. And let me tell you, between that time in my life and now, I have been to the physical therapist about three times I have had a Achilles problem, I have had a hamstring problem, and I know four times I have had a shoulder problem, and most recently, right now, I'm going to physical therapy because I have tendinitis in my bicep, and I'm stronger than ever right now. I have this tendinitis in my bicep, so my upper body is not getting the workout I would like it to be. But you know what I'm focusing on? I'm focusing on lower back abs and lower body. I'm gaining strength in other areas, and this bicep thing is going to be resolved, and then I'm going to slowly start keep going with my upper body, and then eventually I'm going to probably injure lower body again, and I hope it's not too painful. I hope it's not a surgery. But in the pursuit of strength, if I'm allowing myself to potentially, not even for sure, potentially get injured, I'm gaining strength along the way. It's so interesting how we look at failure, and I think of injury as failure when we think I don't want to get injured, or otherwise known as I don't want to fail. So because we don't want to fail or get injured, we're going to not do anything, we're not going to change, we're not going to push ourselves. And in the end, that is failure. Now if you're totally new, if you literally have hardly even been doing more than walking, maybe it would be a great idea to hire a trainer. Maybe it would be a great idea to start really slow, but if you've been doing this a while, like a lot of my clients, a lot of my clients are like, I've got my five pound weights. If it's been a few months, it's time to jack up that weight. Maybe do a few more extra reps, maybe go up to eight pounds, but go less reps. It's time to shake things up and see what you're made of. If we are going to go to our own next level, we are going to have failure along the way, and the failure might be injury, but can that be okay? I would rather be injured now and have a tendinitis in my bicep at the age of 48 as opposed to have no bicep strength at 75 and all of a sudden go to fall and not be able to catch myself and break a hip, or all of a sudden I can't pick up my grandkids. I really can't move very well when I have grandkids someday, I would rather be dealing with this now. So it's so interesting. I was thinking when I was getting ready for this podcast, I was thinking about my son and my husband, and I thought, you know, in so many areas, our kids need to listen to us. We are the experts in so many areas, but in this area, I really needed to listen to my son, and I did, and I'm so glad I did. And in many areas, the men need to learn from us, but in this area, I'm so glad I learned from my husband. I'm so glad I learned from LAIRD HAMILTON. I'm so glad I've learned from all the guys I've talked to about this in my life. A lot of my friends that already have this way of thinking, like, yeah, you need to lift heavier if you want to build muscle. Yeah, you're going to need to eat more protein to build muscle. Yeah, you might get injured. That's kind of their that's the their thoughts on it, yeah, you might get injured. You might have to go to physical therapy. It's so funny when I went to my physical therapist for my shoulder a few months ago, and he's this big bodybuilder guy, and I remember saying to him, thank you so much, because I really believe in the magic of physical therapy. And I said, Thank you so much. And he goes, Hey, I'll see you again. And I laughed. I said, I hope not. And he said something like, no, no, I'll see you again, because I know that you really do want to gain muscle, and I know you're going to push yourself, so I'll see you again. It's no problem, but we as women think it's such a problem, we don't want to injure ourselves. So I want to encourage you to think differently about this. I want to encourage you to think if I do injure myself as I'm lifting heavier, as I'm getting stronger, it's okay. I'll go to a physical therapist, or I'll go to my doctor and see what they you know, what they prescribe. And my hope for you is that you don't injure yourself, is that you actually start feeling stronger and stronger and stronger and more proud of yourself, and you kind of blow your own mind. But if there is an injury along the way, that's just a temporary failure that is. Necessary for you to go to your own next level. It's the price you're going to have to pay to become the next 2.0 version of you. And let's play it out. I'm going to use myself as an example. There's really for me two options. I can either stay the same, keep doing what I'm doing, and potentially be losing strength, losing muscle, every year as I age, because the statistics tell us that's what happens. Because I'm worried that I'm going to injure myself, which, because I'm losing muscle, I have a higher chance of injuring myself, right? It's like the irony, or I can say, You know what? I'm going to gain strength now. I'm going to be willing to get uncomfortable. I'm going to be willing to potentially push myself too hard sometimes and get a little injury, because I want to increase my percentage chance of not injuring myself in the future and in the process, feel proud, feel strong like the way I look even more there is going to be potential failure either way. I would rather be more in control of my daily habits, and I'd rather be enjoying myself along the way. I'd rather be feeling strong along the way. Now the last thing I want to talk about is the beautiful balance of thinking differently in order to get out of your comfort zone, in order to get stronger, to build more muscle, and also, at the same time, listening to your body. And this is a very personal thing, and this is a very fluid thing, meaning it's not like you get to a point where you're like, Oh, I now know how to listen to my body. Oh, I now know how to identify excuses that are thoughts that are getting in my way. It changes. We're aging, we're getting stronger. We sometimes hurt ourselves. Sometimes we don't listen to ourselves, because sometimes we don't know is that an injury is or is that just being sore because I'm pushing myself it sometimes it's hard to know. And so this is a very fluid thing that I think is always kind of changing. So you are going to have to figure out for you the beautiful sweet spot of, am I listening to my body and my body saying, This is too heavy for me, or am I feeling like, wow, this might be heavier than I've ever lifted. This might be more than I've ever done. I've never pushed myself this way. It feels uncomfortable, but yet, this is what I'm going for. I'm trying to do things I've never done before, and it's also you have to find the sweet spot between you saying I want to do this. I want to get uncomfortable, and then understanding that your primitive brain is also going to say you might injure yourself, you're too old for this, or you shouldn't be lifting weights, or any of those primitive brain type, type of excuses. And what this does is it really builds trust to be able to constantly be thinking, Am I listening to my body, or am I listening to my primitive brain? What is really going on here? And being able to trust yourself and we, and I've talked a lot about trusting yourself, and I've talked a lot about on the podcast, about evaluating yourself after it's so important that after you make a decision that's too heavy for me, I think I'm going to push myself harder. Whatever your decision is that afterwards you say, Was that too heavy for me? Do I think my body was really saying, This is too much? Was my and I do this all the time, my body will say, you need a rest day. Don't go to the gym. You're really sore. And I will say, okay, Courtney, is this really I need a rest day? Do I really feel like I'm getting sick? Do I really feel like I need to take care of myself? Or is that just my primitive brain getting in the way? And I'll make a decision. I'll either say nope, I'm really going to trust my body and I'm going to take a day, and then afterwards I evaluate, do I think that was the right decision? Was my body really telling me that? Or did my primitive brain get in the way? And when we evaluate, we always want to do it from curiosity and with love, not from a you always do this. I knew you were going to fail type of energy. So I hope this podcast is what you needed. I hope it is a push for you to really go to your own next level. And if you feel like you need a personal trainer to be with you in the gym while you do it. I think that is a beautiful thing. It definitely can't hurt. And if you need a coach to get into your mind to help you understand what is stopping you from taking the action every day that you keep telling yourself you want to take, then I'm here for you for that, and you can just head over to modern body, modern life.com, and schedule a consultation. I would love to help you go to your next level. Have a great Tuesday for information on how we can work together. Head to modern body, modern life.com, to schedule a consultation with me. I'm currently coaching women privately, and I offer group coaching programs you. Dependency.