Client deep dive... Getting back into training after having time off!

Today we're talking through the process of getting one of my gym gals back into training, after having a few months off 🙏🏽
We're looking at the convo I had with this client about doing so, what we actually wanna think about when getting back into gym, and what I'm thinking about when I write this clients program 🏋🏽‍♀️

Join the Eat Like Ruby Podcast Community
🍏 https://www.facebook.com/groups/eatlikerubypodcast

Follow Eat Like Ruby
🍫 https://www.instagram.com/eat_like_ruby/

Work with Ruby;
🥙 https://eatlikeruby.com.au

If you loved this episode, please;
🍑 Share to your IG stories & tag eat_like_ruby
🍔 Subscribe, rate & review on Apple podcast or Spotify!

For advertising opportunities, please contact;
📧 management@eatlikeruby.com.au

DISCLAIMER
The Eat Like Ruby podcast is not a substitute for professional medical or dietary advice.
The advice given in this episode is general in nature and should not be used to treat any medical conditions, health conditions, illnesses, injuries and/or any nutrition related conditions, deficiencies or similar.
This podcast is not to be used as, or in place of, medical advice or dietary advice.
Please consult your health care professional before implementing any of the advice, information or protocols discussed in this episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

G'day girls, welcome back to the pod. I am back today doing another client deep dive episode. So in these episodes, we just look at like a real life situation that is playing out for one of my real life clients and just talk about it. So I love these episodes. If you don't love them, stay with me for one second. I mean, if you don't love them, feel free to leave. But stay with me for one second because we are gonna talk about something today that we've never really spoken about on the podcast before. I'm gonna talk about one of my clients who's getting back into training after having a few months off, a couple of months off. And she's a very consistent client, very consistent gym girl. She's had some crazy shit going on, and it's just resulted in not really training much at all over the last few months. So I'm gonna talk about what I said to her in that sense and then what we actually did with her training to get her back in. I'm just gonna talk through like what that whole process is like getting a client back into training. So I think that's gonna be a really cool thing to look at. Like always, I'll try and keep this anonymous. This client has had a lot going on, and I want to keep that private for her. So we'll keep this whole thing anonymous. But just really cool, I just think it's so cool to see how we actually deal with these real life scenarios. I think that I forget how many shitty coaches there are out there that don't really help people deal with real life scenarios. They're just kind of like robotic cookie cutter shit. And I do this stuff all day, every day. This is literally my job, is just getting on calls with my girls and just being like, what's been going on? What do we have to deal with? Sometimes nothing's been going on. Life's good, happy days. Other times I have been hit with anything and everything. So I just think it's cool to be a coach. Like I pride myself on being a coach that can actually talk to people and be like, what does your real life look like right now? And how do we adjust nutrition and training to work with that? And I just thought, I literally spoke to this client yesterday and I was just thinking, wow, this would be so cool to just show people how we navigate this. Because it's obviously a common thing for different people at different times, just having shit that comes up in life. Maybe it's good shit, like you go traveling and you don't train for a while, or maybe you just have a lot of annoying, unexpected, full-on things that happen in life. But I think most people can relate to at some point finding yourself in a position where you're like, wow, I've got to get back into training. So, really cool to just talk about what I think this should look like, or what I think this should look like for this client. Really good example. So, just for a little bit of context, this client has been with me for about three years and she's done different nutrition and training programs, and then she's been doing just training only, I'd say for about a year now. I've just been doing training only for this client. She's very into gym, very good lifter, usually very consistent, like a very typical Eat Lack Ruby gym girl in an awesome way. Like big love for this client. And she was always super consistent and she has a pretty full-on job. Like I know most people have a full-on job, but I look at this client and I'm like, no, you have a full-on job. And so there's always times where we kind of have to talk and go, like, is work gonna be full-on? Do we want to scale training back to less days per week or shorter sessions, etc.? And then she might come into other times where she's like, oh, I can bring in an extra session now. Things might be a little bit chill for a few weeks. So we've always just navigated that, depending on what it looks like at the time. But around Easter, I would say. So sitting here right now, it is the 12th of June. Around Easter, this client just was getting like a little bit inconsistent. I was just noticing she wasn't training too much, and we were messaging a little bit, and she was just like, things have just been so forlorn. Like it's so busy. I'm trying, I'm like, I'm doing my best. And I always point out to people during times like that, when you ask someone like, I know for a fact this client is a hard worker, she gets shit done, she has a very busy full-time job, she also has three kids. She literally trains at like three o'clock in the morning, like she gets it done. So when I find myself talking to clients like this and they're saying something like, you know, it's been really busy at the moment, it's been really hard. When I know someone well enough to be like, shit's always busy and hard for you, and you still get it done. So I'm gonna assume right now, shit is very busy and very hard for you. Like you're usually someone who can work around this stuff. If you can't right now, to me, that just says like things are more full on than ever. So I always just want to point that out to people. Like, you're not someone who often comes to me with excuses or comes to anyone with excuses. So, and like the fact that you are right now, I look at that and go, like, it must be quite a busy time or it must be quite a full-on time. So, we want to actually acknowledge that and just give yourself a little bit of grace. And there was one thing lingering in my mind when I was thinking about doing this episode. I just spoke to this client yesterday and then I was thinking yesterday, I should do an episode about that. But there was a little part of my mind going, there is a line here where I do not want, like, I'm just gonna straight up say it, I don't want lazy people to take this as an excuse to be even lazier. Because I'm gonna talk about, like I said, giving this client a little bit of grace when she's been inconsistent with training. And I'm also gonna talk about how we simplified her training a little bit to get back into it. And this is one of those things where there are certain people who definitely need to hear this. Like we have girls that are such hard workers, they're so consistent, and then they struggle to give themselves that bit of grace, and they also struggle to just be like, I'm gonna reduce training a little bit, I'm gonna scale things back a little bit. They have a lot of hesitation to do that because they think they have to do X amount of sessions or duration or intensity or whatever. So I really wanted to do an episode like this for those girls, but then I'm also mindful that we have people that are very inconsistent all the time, and like I said, honestly, just a bit lazy all the time. And so I'm always a little bit apprehensive for people in that position to hear an episode like this and just take it and run with it and be like, well, Rube said I can just chill. Like, Rube said it's fine to be inconsistent, Rube said it's fine to scale everything back. I think there are absolutely times where we have to acknowledge different things in our life and go, I need to scale things back, I need to give myself a little bit of grace. And equally, there are times where we have to look and go, I'm finding excuses, I'm being a slacker, I've got to pull my finger out and ramp this up a bit. So I'm probably going to refer back to that throughout the episode just to remind people of that. But I think it's important to do just like a little bit of a self-audit there and just go, where do I typically fall? Like if I know I'm a consistency queen, I probably need to hear this and just understand there are times where shit might happen and I need to take it a bit easier on myself. If you're someone who takes it a little bit too easy on yourself too often, just make sure you catch that and you don't take all this information and run with it indefinitely. So, anyway, this client, I would say throughout like April and May, just not ticking off her sessions that consistently. I was just reaching out, just being like, just want to make sure everything's all good. And it's a fine line, like you obviously want to reach out to people, but you don't want to pester people, and you also don't want people, I'm I'm aware that people can feel like a little bit of guilt and possibly even shame. Like if I'm constantly hounding someone, like, have you been training? Why aren't you training? What's going on? If you've already got that element there of being like, oh my god, normally I'm so consistent and right now I'm just not, I think it can just make you feel worse where you're like, oh my god, now Ruby's realized I'm inconsistent, or like whoever your coach is, oh my god, they're watching, they're gonna be judging me. I don't even know what to say, I just can't be bothered to like deal with that. I don't have the mental capacity to deal with that right now. And you sort of go into that avoidance thing of like, I'm just not even gonna open those messengers. I just don't want to get into that. And I just always want to point out to my girls, especially girls who are in this position, I am not reaching out to judge you, to shame you, to guilt you, to nothing. Like, I always want to reach out to people. I pretty much do reach out to people and just go like, just want to make sure everything's okay. If things have just been a bit full on and we can't get it done right now, that's fine. Shit happens, totally fine. But also, like, just actually want to make sure things are okay. Because obviously, if you're a coach and you see someone just not getting sessions done, you are gonna wonder, like, well, do we have an injury or an illness or something major going on that I actually do need to know about? Or is it just life is laughing right now and I'm just freaking can't get it done, roops, right? So I'm always mindful of reaching out enough, but again, not adding to this person's plate when they feel like they've got a lot of shit going on. So kind of just dabbled in that throughout April and May. And then towards the end of May, this client was like, I'm gonna book in for a call, like, can we get it sorted? And I'm like, yes, we can. Best message I have got. Oh yeah, book in, let's actually go. Like, so stoked to get that from that client and see her book in. So then we spoke yesterday, and like I said, I already knew this client just had a busy life, busy job, like things were full on. But then as soon as we got on, I was like, what's been happening? How are we? And she straight away hit me with one of the gnarliest stories I've ever heard from a client. I've gotten on calls with people and just been hit out of the blue with like, I got fired, I quit my job, my husband left me, I'm leaving my husband, someone is sick, someone passed away, like you name it, I've just been hit with things from clients where I'm like, wow, okay, makes sense that we haven't really been that consistent with training at the moment. This client hit me with something yesterday where I was like, oh my God, I would have bet a million dollars today that you weren't gonna say that to me. So she is fine, life is fine, like everything's alright. But just a very intense thing happened in this client's life in early May. And I literally said to her, I was like, can we just acknowledge like what you've been through and just point out the fact that if you got on this call right now and told me that story and then said to me, But my nutrition and training's been perfect, I would actually be like, What the hell? Like it would be more weird if your nutrition and training had been perfect during this time. So I always just want to point that out to people. Like it absolutely makes sense when certain things happen in life that nutrition and training does kind of just either go to shit or is just inconsistent, or we just don't think about it. Like we've just got other things that have to take priority at certain times. And I've said on this podcast before, like that was definitely me when my dad passed away. And again, I think everyone listening would agree that it would be weird if I said, yeah, I was 25 years old, my dad passed away really unexpectedly, but like my nutrition and training was perfect during that time and for the month after it. Like that would be so weird if I said that. So I always just want to point that out to people. If you've had something really unexpected and just full-on happen in your life that either physically takes up a lot of time and or takes up a lot of your mental capacity, you're like, this thing has just been filling my brain. When I get to the end of the day, I just literally do not have the mental capacity to think about my nutrition or my training or whatever. So I just wanted to point this out to that client yesterday. And I just want to point that out to people listening as well. If you are someone who is otherwise usually very consistent, very on your shit, it makes sense when big unexpected things happen in life that we lose some of that consistency. And again, I think even if we side note for a second and just come back to what I said before, think about the wording of that. When big unexpected things happen in my life, I become inconsistent versus someone who's like, no, I'm just inconsistent all the time because I just can't get my shit together. There's a difference here. So if you're someone who just can't get your shit together with your normal day-to-day life happening, you want to look at that. If you do have your shit together most of the time, but then big unexpected things happen and we lose that, give yourself a little bit of grace. And then from here, we're gonna look at like what I actually implemented with this client and what we're gonna do moving forward. So, first of all, I said to this client, like, do we actually want to get back into training? Are we ready to get back into training? I'm assuming you do because you reached out and booked the call, but just worth actually asking that question. Are we ready to get back into it to some extent? And she was like, Yes, Rubes, so keen. She is someone who, like I said, is usually very consistent, has a busy job, has a busy family, etc. So is in that position where like training is the thing she does for herself. Training is the thing like she gets up at the crack of dawn, gets it done, feels stoked on herself for being like, got my training done. So I think we can all relate to if you're in a similar position with your training, when you lose that, you just have that feeling of like, oh, I just want to get that back, just to like have my feel-good thing happening in my day. So she was like, Yep, definitely want to get back into this. And then I said to her, okay, cool. We can literally take this in so many directions to the point where we could start with two sessions with three exercises in each session. Two sessions a week, three exercises. If that's what we needed to do to get you back in there and to just make it realistic, we can do that. And I just think it's important for people to understand that. And this is where our whole like no right or wrong thing comes into play. It is not right to train a certain amount of times every week or wrong to train a certain amount of times every week. It's not right to do a certain amount of exercises or wrong to do others. We always just want to look at like what is my goal, but also what is practical, what is feasible, what is realistic for me right now, and find that sweet spot. So obviously, if I'm sitting there with someone and they're saying to me, my number one priority, my number one goal is to like build my glutes, build my delts, build my back, build my biceps, build my quads, I want to build my whole body. I really want to get after it. That is my priority. I'm very committed, I'm very motivated. And for that reason, like I'm able to hit the gym four times a week or five times a week. I'm happy to spend an hour there, I'm happy to spend an hour and a half there. Like, whatever it is, we can then talk through that with a client. Equally, if we have a client sitting there going, Rubs, the last three months have been an absolute shit show. I just want to get back into it and lay those good foundations again. That's where, like I said, we could say to someone, two sessions a week, three exercises, let's do that for a month and then we can go from there. Right. So I said to this client, we can start as little as we need to, we can start wherever we need to. And pretty much what we decided for this client, like she said to me, I think three days is gonna be realistic. She's usually someone who would do four. So just taking that little step back to three is just like meeting yourself where you're at. Like, yes, I want to get back into this, but jumping straight back into four might not be doable. Let's start with three. And I was like, 100%, could not agree more. Unless you were really adamant on doing four, I actually think you starting back with three sessions is awesome. And then from there, I said to her, we can divvy up three sessions a few different ways. So we could go like three full body workouts every week. We could go one lower, one upper, one full body. If there's something we wanted to hit a little bit more than others, we could do like two lower, one upper, two upper, one lower. Like there's so many different ways we can split this. So do you have any preference on that just in terms of goals or even things you just like to do more than others in the gym? And she was like, no, I think I like the idea of just keeping everything really even. And so we settled on one lower, one upper, and one full body session. And again, I said to her, I think this is perfect as well because unless you were really adamant on hitting a certain body part more than others, I think this is just a nice even split to get you back in, get everything moving again, but we're not gonna overdo it. Like we're not gonna go back in and hit three leg sessions a week and have you frigging buckled and not being able to walk around at your job, right? Like we want to acknowledge that you've essentially had two months off. We are gonna scale things back, like weight-wise and movement-wise and everything, just the overall volume, because again, we don't want to go from zero to a hundred. We just want to ease back in for the sake of your body, like your body hasn't done this for two months, but also for the sake of making it practical, realistic, and honestly just doable for you. We want you to look at this training and go, yes, I think I can do this in my week. And so that starts with working out like the actual split and how many days we're gonna do. And I think three is just a great sweet spot to get us back in and get us consistently training, but not be so hard to commit to schedule-wise and also not be so much for our body to jump back into like five sessions a week. So I think three is perfect and that nice even split of lower, upper, and a full body ses. And then I said to this client, I say this to all my clients when I'm writing programs, but especially somebody in this position. I said, is there anything that comes to your mind where you're just like, I don't want to do that exercise? I don't want that in my program. Because again, what I said to this client is like, we are trying to remove every possible mental barrier that we can so we can get you back into training. And I say this to most of my clients most of the time. Like, we want to remove as many barriers as we can to get you training consistently. But when someone is in a good position where like schedule's good, life's good, things are pretty cruisy, I can give good effort to my training, I can physically give good effort to my training, mentally, I can give a bit to my training, then we can have that conversation of like, okay, well, for this program, should we bring in some of those more challenging things? Things that you have like a bit of a love-hate relationship with, right? Like, I think everyone can relate. I think nearly every person has a love-hate relationship with Bulgarians. If you know, you know. A lot of people have a love-hate relationship with hip thrusts. Sometimes we can have it just for a while with certain exercises, like a hack squat, RDL, usually it's lower body. Usually lower body is like where the mental capacity is taken up from training, like thinking about those big lower body exercises. But what I was saying there is if someone is in a really good position with other things in their life and they're feeling really positive and focused and motivated, you have times where you're like, yeah, let's bring in some of those love-hate things. Let's bring in that challenge. Like you kind of embrace it and you get fired up. You're like, I'm gonna look at those Bulgarians and I'm gonna curse Ruby, but like I'm gonna rip in and get it done. Whereas there's other times where there's a lot of other shit going on in life or the mental capacity just isn't there. And we would look at something like Bulgarians and just go, nah, I'm not going. I'm not going. And I just think it's important to understand that and acknowledge that. And that comes back to my bigger point from before. We don't want to do that 52 weeks a year. You don't want to remove every challenge for 52 weeks a year because we want to remember that the point of training is to challenge ourselves. So we actually meet that challenge, adapt, and progress with our training. So we can't be in a position where we're like constantly removing anything we don't want to do, constantly never challenging ourselves. So that really does just tie back into what I was saying before is there's times where we need to acknowledge, yeah, it's gonna be beneficial for me to do that, to remove some of those barriers. And then there's times where we want to be like, I need to challenge myself, I need to ramp this up. And I think it's just super important to understand that and embrace that instead of feeling like I can always remove challenges and just be essentially slack and lazy all the time, or on the flip side, be like, wow, there's times in my life where it would really benefit me to go a little bit easier on myself, but I don't allow myself to do that. And so with this particular client being in the position that she was in, I just said to her, like, I want to remove any mental barrier. I want you to look at your sessions or think about those sessions when you're like, should I go to gym tomorrow? Think about the session that you meant to do and be like, yeah, I can go and do that. I don't want you to be like, should I go to gym tomorrow? Oh my god, it's Bulgarians and then it's hip thrust and then it's this and then it's that. That just seems so draining. I actually just don't have that in me. No, I'm not going. So we're trying to remove that just so you can think about those sessions and go, yep, for the most part, I'm feeling good. I can get that done. So I always want to ask the client, what comes to mind for you when we think about that? Are there particular exercises or anything particular in your gym? Even some people just find themselves in a position where they're like, I can never get the platform in my gym, or like the leg press is so annoying in my gym. Like everyone's gonna have different little things with their setup and their equipment and everything. But if you know that there are things where you're like, oh my god, that thing just pisses me off when it's in my program, that is what we want to remove during a time like this. So again, we can remove that barrier when you look at the session. You don't look and go, oh my god, that big annoying thing. So she pretty much just said hip thrust. Like she was like, Robes, I just cannot be bothered setting up a hip thrust. And I was like, Yep, that's fine. No worries, no hip thrust in this program, totally fine. And then she didn't really have any other requests in that sense. And I just said to her, like, if anything comes to mind, just shoot me a message. But otherwise, I'm very mindful of this as well. When I write anyone's program, I'm always just mindful of like what things do take up our mental capacity and what don't. And just thinking about that, even if a client is in a really good position and they're focused and they're keen to get after it, I always try and balance the session with like, okay, there's a few things here that might be like a bit mentally draining. So then what else can we put in there that's not so mentally draining? And what I'm talking about here and what I'm thinking about here, I feel like this could be a cool lesson for um coaches, any coaches listening. If we think about exercises that do require a big setup, I think that can have like a mental drain on people. If we think about unilateral exercises, so either single leg or single arm, that can be draining for people because if you look at something like Bulgarians and you've got three sets, well, in a way, it's like, no, I actually have six sets because I gotta do this leg and then this leg, and that's one set. And then I have to do that three times. So it's gonna be six sets. So that can be mentally draining for people when we've got to essentially double it to do both sides. And then I think impractical equipment and or impractical supersets is something we need to think about as well. So I've said this on the podcast before, I don't program too many supersets because A, I just don't think they're that good. And B, you don't know people's gym, you don't know people's setup. So if you put something like, um, let's say leg press into leg extension, I mean, just programming wise, I feel like that's a terrible superset. I hope many people aren't doing that. But if you tell someone like, I want you to do a leg press set and then I want you to get off that, go do leg extension set and go back and forth. If a person trains in a gym where those machines are really far away from each other, that's annoying. If you train in a busy gym and people are gonna be like, bro, you're literally taking a leg press and a leg extension right now, that's annoying. If you try and do that and someone steals one of your machines during that superset, that's annoying. And when we've been training for a while, where are Aware of all of these things. And I think when we look at our program, whether it's conscious or even subconsciously, there are things that are going to jump out at you where you're going to be like, oh my God, that's annoying, or that's draining. So if we have a program that's full of like unilateral movements, really complicated setups, we've got a bunch of supersets going on, you can look at that session and just go, I don't have that in me. Physically, I can't be bothered. Mentally, I definitely can't be bothered. It just seems like too much. And that's that barrier that I am trying to remove. And like I said, I try and remove this most of the time from most sessions. But when we're working with someone who's in a good place and wants to get after it and they've got really specific goals, obviously we do want to have some of those challenging things in there because again, that's the point of training. So that's where I would look and go, okay, that exercise has a big setup. That exercise is unilateral. So if we're going to have those two things in there, then let's bring in some easier things that aren't so mentally draining. And that's how I like to always try and balance my sessions for my clients. And again, you're just looking at that individual and going, I think they're in a position right now where they could handle a few more barriers and a few more challenges. Or like this client we're talking about, I think they're in a position where we want to remove as many of them as possible and pretty much remove all of them. So I think it's an important thing as a coach to understand that and work with that. You don't want to be so narrow-minded to be like, this is the best session for this client, programming-wise, if practically it's a very hard session for that client to get their head around and to actually complete on a consistent basis. So very important to just think about all of that, in my opinion. And I'm gonna actually look at the sessions that I wrote for this client in a second, we're gonna break those down. But what you're also thinking about is like we program in 10-week blocks in Eat Lacquery. And I said to this client, really, what we're thinking about for these 10 weeks is just getting you back in the gym. We just want you consistently training. So if we think three times a week is doable for you, that is awesome. If in 10 weeks' time you've done three sessions a week for the last 10 weeks, you are going to feel absolutely stoked on yourself because we've set a plan to do three sessions a week and you are followed through on that plan. That alone is something that is missing from your life right now. You have this element and I'm not judging, I'm not shaming. Like I said, so many people find themselves in this position for good reason. But when we do, we tend to have this element and this thing lingering that's like, I'm not following through on the shit that I want to be following through on right now. And that's a shitty feeling, especially for someone who is a doer and is usually consistent and likes to get shit done and likes to progress. If you're just going through the days being like, oh my God, work's so draining and all of this shit is so draining, and the one thing that I usually do for myself I'm not doing, that's just making me feel even worse. So my number one thing is to bring that back for you. How do we bring that back? We bring it back by putting a program in place that you think you can actually do. And so if we can get a few weeks of that happening, you're gonna start to be like, hell yes, I'm back. Like I'm back. And again, anyone who knows that feeling, if you know, you know. If you've had shit come up where your training's been derailed or your nutrition's been derailed and then you get back into it, you are so stoked on yourself. So that's what I want for this client above all else. And then obviously the physical benefit of consistently getting back into training as well. And then I was saying to her, if we run through this 10 weeks and you're pretty consistent and we get these sessions happening, this program's gonna take you through to the middle, near the end of August. And so as we get towards the end of this one, we can just see like, do you actually really like this? Is three days a week good for you? And do we think another 10 weeks of three days a week is gonna be good for you? Or do you feel like you've got your groove back, you've got your foundation back, and you want to bring back in that fourth day? There is absolutely no right or wrong with that. And she doesn't have to decide that for two months. It's only gonna be when we come towards the end of this current program. I'm just gonna say, hey, do we like three days? Do we want to run that again? Or are we ready to bring back in a fourth one? Completely up to you. And then we write the program accordingly. I will always ask all of these questions and then go off and write the program accordingly so we know we're in that sweet spot of like, we've factored in everything you think that you need, like practically, to pull off a consistent 10 weeks of training, and then I can go and write the program with all of that stuff in mind, but also factoring in intelligent programming at the same time. If I can bring in the actual structured programming side of things, but make it work with the shit that this person needs, that is the sweet spot that we always talk about. This is the training sweet spot. And so this is everything I was saying to her is like, let's just get this consistency going throughout June, July into August, and we can just see how you're feeling in August. And so then again, coming back to what do we need to do to get that consistency happening? We need to work out the amount of days you want to train. We've done that. I also then think, okay, we want these sessions to be short, sharp, and effective. We don't want sessions that are gonna drag out. Because again, coming back to someone thinking about their sessions in advance, if you're thinking about a session and you're like, oh my God, I've got seven or eight exercises to work through, again, mentally, that can just make you go, no, I'm not even going. I'm not even bothering. It's just too much to get my head around. So for this client, I said, like, I'm just gonna factor in a few bang for your buck exercises in every session. Because I would so much rather over the next 10 weeks see you do one lower body session a week really consistently with four exercises in it, as opposed to program you a lower body session with seven exercises in it and watch you go back to inconsistently doing it. So when I went off and wrote this program, that was really something I had in mind. And then just all of those other things, like minimize the unilateral work, minimize the setup, minimize the stupersets and running around the gym and having to find a bunch of crazy equipment. Let's just keep it simple because simple is easy in the sense of it's easy to follow, it's easy to tick off, and that is what we want to get our consistency back. So if we come and actually have a look at the program that I wrote for this client, like I said, we went with one lower body, one upper body, and one full body session. And I think that's also really cool because you can play around with what days of the week you want to do that. I put it in this client's calendar for Monday lower body, Tuesday, upper, and then I think Friday, the full body. But like I always say to my clients, you can move those sessions around to suit you. Obviously, we don't want to do like legs back to back. We wouldn't want to do legs on Monday and then again on Tuesday. Same with upper body, but when you've got three sessions like this, very easy to maneuver them around, which I think is really cool and just another thing that's gonna help actually get them done on a weekly basis. And so if we come in and look at the lower body session, this client, let's remember, this client said to me, no hip thrust. I don't want any hip thrust variation in there at all. And I was like, yep, that's fine. And side note, that relates to what I was just saying, where I said, like, I would rather a client do four exercises consistently rather than seven exercises inconsistently. Same thing here as like, yes, in a perfect world, we would have some hip thrust variation in our program because we know it's a good exercise. But if having that in there is going to make you look at the session and go, no, can't be bothered, I'm not doing it. Then again, I'd rather you consistently do a session without that exercise for a while than put it in there and then you become inconsistent with the training because you don't want to do it. And again, side note on my side note, that is something that we want to think about at times, but we don't want to let ourselves get away with that all the time. You don't want to look at every program and just go, I'm never doing anything I don't like. Because again, it's gonna leave you in a position where it's like, well, is it even challenging? Therefore, is it actually gonna get us the progress that we want? There are times where we need to embrace the challenge, and there are times where we need to realize that the challenge probably is gonna create a barrier. So, right now, we think that that challenge is gonna create a barrier. Let's remove it just for this program, and then we can go from there. So, no hip thrust in this one. Literally, we have a warm-up and then we have two sets of dumbbell RDLs. This is a client who can do very heavy barbell RDLs, but this is something you want to think about is like you haven't done that for three months. So we don't want you to walk into the gym day one after two or three months off and pick up a 90 kilo barbell. We're probably going to get injured or we're gonna be super sore and then have to take the rest of the week off. And again, taking the week off is something we're trying to move away from. So that's why I really intentionally made this a dumbbell IDL because we're not gonna go too heavy. Usually grip is the thing that stops us going too heavy with these. So this client's going to be forced to keep it a little bit lighter and just get back into that movement pattern before we go too heavy. So that was a very intentional thing for me, even to the point where next to it I've written start light and focus on technique, range, and control. I just want to get you hinging again. Like an RDL is a hinge. We just want to get your body condition to hinging again. And then as the weeks go on, we can load it back up. And I said there that I've literally got two sets, eight to ten reps. I have got that changing and going up to three sets in a few weeks' time. So surprise for this client, your three sets are coming. But starting with two sets, again, just to start. Literally just to friggin' start. And then we're going into three sets on a leg press. Again, I've written start light and ease back in because this is a client who can do a very, very heavy leg press, like up in the 200s. I don't want her walking into the gym tomorrow and doing 200 kilo leg press. Her body will be like, what the hell is this? Just had two months off, and now I'm doing max leg press. Like, no, we do not want that. So that's why I've told her to start light. And a leg press is a good example of an exercise that doesn't have a crazy amount of setup. Like, yes, you've obviously got to put those plates on, but it's not like a back squat or something like that where we've got to like set up the rack, find the plates, wait for the rack, all of those things. And it tends to, I feel like there's an element with a leg press where you're like, well, at least I'm sitting down. Right? Like, even though it's still gonna be hard, just think it's mentally that little bit easier than something like a back squat or even a hack squat. So that was a very intentional exercise as well. And then we've gone into laying hammy curls, three sets of those, and then three sets of seated hip abductions on the machine. And that is it. And that's just such a simple session to get your head around, in my opinion. You don't have to go hunting for equipment, you don't have to do any crazy setups. Like three out of four of them are on a machine, and the other one is dumbbells. So you're gonna walk up to the dumbbell rack and pick those up, and then you're gonna walk up to the machines, put your towel on them, and rip in. Two of them are pin-loaded machines, so you literally don't even have to put the weights on, you just have to put the pin in, and that is it. And if we think about somebody just going in and getting this done every week for the next 10 weeks, that is awesome. We've got a hinge, so that's a pull, we've got a push, we've got an abduction, and we've got some hammy work in there as well. That is awesome, in my opinion. That's unreal. I would do that session myself, and I haven't had three months off. So slay. Then if we look at the upper body, we have got seated row on the pin machine, and this is just in there just to get a bit warmed up, like warm up the back, get moving, get pulling some weight again with the upper board, and then we're going into lap pull downs. This client particularly really likes lap pull downs. She always wants them in there. So again, it's like, let's do a little warm-up exercise, then let's go into something you love. Awesome, happy days. Again, both of those are pin-loaded machines. No setup, no walking around trying to find plates, no nothing at all. Put the pin in, let's go. Then I've got a machine shoulder press. Again, exactly the same thing. Walk up, put the towel down, put the pin in, do your reps. Happy days. Lateral razors with the dumbbells. This client, particularly, like most gym girls, likes back and shoulder work for her upper body. So this is predominantly like a back and shoulder session, really. And then we're finishing with a superset of tricep pulldowns and hammer curls. This is a superset that I sometimes do for people. If you're a client, you might have had this before. But anytime I do a superset, I like to do it with smaller muscles because I think when we are supersetting big exercises, like I said before, I would never superset like a leg press with an RDL. Like I think that's a recipe for disaster. I think that's an absolute recipe for injury. Two big movements, two taxing movements. You don't want to be in the mentality of like get one done and straight away go and do the other one. I just think that's a recipe for disaster. So anytime we're supersetting, I only like to do it with smaller things that can work really well together. And think about practically how would this work in the gym? So if we think about tricep pull down on a cable and then hammer curls, like dumbbell hammer curls, you can go and get your dumbbells, bring them over to your cable, and then you can stand right there and do it on that spot. You can do your triceps, you can let that rope go, you can pick up your dumbbells and you can curl right there. Then you can put your dumbbell down there, do your triceps again. You don't have to hog multiple pieces of equipment. You don't have one piece of equipment on one side of the gym, the other piece on the other side of the gym. You're trying to run back and forth. Like it's a practical superset. And for someone in this position, it can be a cool way of just making that session a little bit shorter because you're really going to work through those four exercises: the seated roll on the pin machine, your lat pull down, your shoulder press, your lat raises, and then just finish with a superset. Again, I think any gym girl can look at a session like that and be like, wow, mentally, that's not a draining session. So again, we can remove so many of the barriers that this client might currently be facing. She could look at that session and go, yeah, you know what? I can go get that done. Like I can do that. I'm a badass. I've done a lot harder sessions than this, I can get this one done. And then if we look at the final sesh being full body, we've got face pulls, superset with cable crunch. Again, this is a superset I like to do for some of my girls. So current clients, you might have seen this one before. But if we think about face pull, we've got the rope on the cable. And then if we think about a cable crunch, we've got the rope on the cable. So again, we're not hogging pieces of equipment, we're not trying to make two random things work together. We're literally doing one set of the face pulls, and then we're staying in that same spot and just going into that cable crunch position and then just going back and forth between those two. Then we've got another superset of heel elevated squats with the dumbbell and back extensions. This is a superset that I sometimes like to do. I sometimes like to superset those heel elevated squats with either that back extension or something like a leg extension. Because again, you can go and get the gear that you need. Like you can get the dumbbell, you can get whatever you use for your heel elevation, and you can put it next to the other machine that you're gonna use. So you don't have to run back and forth across the gym. You can set it all up in that one spot. And those heel elevated squats, I like to use those for a similar reason that I like to use those dumbbell RDLs. This client in particular, like I said, she can do 200 kilo leg presses. So a heel elevated squat with a dumbbell, her grip or her ability to hold a dumbbell is gonna be the thing that caps this exercise. But that is intentional. And I've said this to a lot of clients, any regular clients, or even if you're a fairly new client, you would have seen this in your program at some point, or you would have heard me say this to you at some point. I like to do things like dumbbell RDLs or dumbbell squats in either someone's first program or maybe their second program or with someone in a position like this where they're coming back because of that reason that you are not gonna be able to go crazy heavy. We don't want you to go crazy heavy right now. If you're a beginner, I don't want you to go crazy heavy until you've sent me videos of your RDLs and of your squat. I want to know that you can RDL well and that you can squat well before I put in exercises like that where you're gonna be able to load them really heavy. And then same thing for this client. I've seen her technique, like we know she has good technique, but we also know that her body is not conditioned to heavy lifts right now. So if we were to put in heavy squats, heavy RDLs, etc., and she goes in and tries to hit those big weights that she used to hit, she's gonna be buckled for days. So bringing in the dumbbell variations of these things, anytime I do this, it's intentional because it's like me saying, I don't want you to go crazy heavy. I want you to practice this movement first. And if you're a new client, I want to see that you can do the movement well. If you're a long-term client, but we've had a break or whatever, I want you to get back into the movement pattern before you go really heavy with that movement pattern. So coming back to this program for this client, we've got these heel elevated squats, superset with the back extension. So neither of those are going to be crazy heavy exercises. It's more just about getting back into those movements. And then we've got incline bench press dumbbells. Again, pretty easy. You can walk up to your dumbbell rack, put your bench on the incline, get those done, put them in there because we didn't have any chest work in that other upper body day. And then we finish with the leg extensions on the machine. Very easy, like not easy, obviously, quads are gonna be feeling it, but mentally easy to just walk up, sit down on the machine, put the pin in. So that whole session is face pulls and cable crunches super set, heel elevated squats, back extension super set, incline bench press, dumbbells, leg extensions on the machine. Again, there's nothing in there that you look at and go, oh my god, that's a big setup, that's gonna be draining, that's gonna be time consuming. And that is literally it for this client's program. And if we think about her settling back into that for 10 weeks, if we can consistently tick off those sessions, which we've done everything we possibly can to make them as doable and as quote, easy as possible, meaning like mentally easy, if she can then get back into consistently doing them, after a few weeks, and especially after 10 weeks, we're gonna be in a position where we're like, okay, you've been pushing weight with your lower body really consistently for 10 weeks because we got leg press and we got squats in there. You've been pulling weight because we've got RDLs, we've got back extensions. You've been pulling with your upper bod because we've got some rows, some lap pulldowns, we've been doing some shoulder work, a little bit of arm work, a little bit of chest work. We've just got everything moving consistently again. And when you're someone with a big training history like this, you're not starting from square one. This client's probably gonna see that, yeah, she's probably gonna be a little bit sore after some of these sessions just because her body's gonna be like, whoa, long time no lift. But that's gonna settle pretty quickly. You're gonna get some of that conditioning back, you're gonna get those movement patterns back, your technique will come back, probably find ourselves towards the end of this program being like, okay, Rubes, I'm ready to ramp this up. Like physically, my body's ready to ramp it up a bit. Mentally, I'm now feeling stoked with myself. I've got my confidence back and I've just got that feeling back of like, I can do this, I can get this done. So now I'm ready to make it a little bit harder. But we've just got to lay that foundation again. That is the position we're in right now, is physically laying that foundation for your body just to get conditioned to lifting weights again and just mentally prove to yourself, or not even prove to yourself, but just gather that evidence and just settle back into that position of being like, I'm a gym girl, I get it done. And so on that note, before we wrap up this episode, I'm just gonna read out the message that I sent to this client. So sitting here right now, it's Friday, and I spoke to her yesterday. I said, I'm gonna go off and write this for you. And I said, we'll have it ready for Monday, but also like if you want to get started sooner, go for it. And then I send her this message this morning and just said, hello, XYZ, happy Friday. So good to talk to you yesterday and so keen for you to get back into things. And honestly, with everything you've had going on, it makes so much sense that you didn't have the capacity for training. So give yourself some grace with that and know that we can ease back in over the coming weeks. In saying that, your new program is ready to go. I've tried to be really mindful of keeping the session short, sharp, and not too draining, especially mentally. Definitely, in capital letters, definitely ease back in. It's been a while since you lifted heavy, so we don't want to go from zero to a hundred and end up too sore and need to have more time off. Keep this in mind and stick with the nice light weights next week, just focusing on getting moving again and easing your body back into the gym. We can gradually build things up over the coming weeks and months to get back to where you want to be and be fit and fab for the big birthday. So she has a big birthday coming up as well, which is cool. Any questions or queries next week, just let me know. I really want to make sure the program works for you so you're motivated to stick with it. So if there's anything we need to tweak, just shoot me a message. And so my whole point with that is just reiterating to this client, like, you've been through a lot, you've had a few months off, rightly so, and we can absolutely get back into it. I think sometimes we can get in our own head and be like, oh my god, I've undone everything, like it's gonna be so hard for me to get back into it. And like, while there can be a little bit of truth to the fact that, like, yeah, it's gonna be hard to get back into it, we definitely have an undone years of training. And the best thing we can do is just get back into it. So I always just want to remind people of that. Like, let it go. Any sort of shitty feelings, anything you're like beating yourself up about, just let it go and we can just move forward from here. And then obviously, as we do, start light, ease back in, just think about gradually building things back up so we can gradually get back into it in a nice way, instead of like I said in that message, going from zero to a hundred and needing to have two weeks off again. That's the last thing we want to do. So it's actually awesome because while I've been sitting here recording, this client has done the first session. So she's back. She's ticked it off. She did the lower body sesh, she's stuck to it. She's done, like, this is just cool to look at. She's done the leg press around 100 kilos, which side note, like that's still awesome. And there's people listening that'll be like, I can't do a hundred kilos, and I haven't had three months off. But for context of that client, like she was doing up in the 200s. So just cool to scale that back and just get back into that movement. And she'll probably find that over the next month. She'll probably go into the 120s, 140s, get back into those higher 100s pretty soon. And so again, you haven't undone years of training by having a few months off. You just have to ease back in and be a bit gradual with it. So massive slay from this client for getting that session done. And cool to even look, like in the app, it tells us how long it took. It took her 38 minutes. That is awesome because that was very intentional. Again, I would rather her do four exercises in a 40-minute session as opposed to program a one-hour session and have her be like, Roops, I can't get that done. So there are times, like I have clients who are listening right now who will definitely be doing one-hour sessions. There are times for that, that is awesome. We've got clients that do 40 minute sessions like this, there are times for that, and that is awesome. So I hope the one thing people can take from this episode is just understanding, first of all, that it's normal to have shit happen in life that affects our training at times. Secondly, the best thing we can do is just ease back into that. And as we do get back into it, just understanding that there are going to be times where it serves us to scale things back and just make it a bit more simple and a bit more doable. And then equally, there's gonna be times where it's like, okay, cool, this is a time to challenge myself. I'm gonna ramp it up, gonna bring in some more challenging things. Maybe I'm gonna bring in an extra session, I'm just gonna crank it all up a bit. And just knowing that neither of those is right or wrong, just more so about understanding what might be good to do at what times. Or having an unreal coach like myself who can help you work that out. If this episode has not proven that I am here for the gals, I don't know what will. So that is all from me today. Big shout out to this client if she's listening. I am literally beyond stoked to have her back and to even just see her tick off that session today is unreal. So that is all from me today. I will be back very soon. Thank you so much, as always.