Michelle MacDonald (00:00):

If they're like, Hey, I want it, I want it. Can we get this done in six, seven months? And then you're like, well, can you give me, I don't know, what do you say one or two years? How do you get them excited?

Hattie Boydle (00:10):

We talk about being a Game, find joy in the game. Learn how to play the game. Learn how to love playing the game. Enjoy the responsibility of what it takes to build your muscle. Find pride in working hard. Work hard to work hard. Don't just work hard because you want this thing on the other end. That's like a 12 week challenge that's going to be very short-lived. Guess what? As soon as you hit that goalpost what you think, you're not going to have to keep working hard. It doesn't hit that way.

Michelle MacDonald (00:43):

Welcome back to the show. It's episode two with my guest Hattie Boydle, and we are going to dive right in. So the focus of part two is going to be maximizing training and nutrition. And my goal, our goal is to make sure that you guys walk away with a ton of tips and strategies that you can implement right away. Also, being aware of some of the red flags, some of the myths and misconceptions around building muscle for women and also the importance of a really balanced health self, self-care routine. You can't neglect that piece of it, especially if you're trying to train hard and you want to be in this for the long term. And then let's dive right in. So Hattie, welcome back. Hello. Let's start with the importance of self-care routine. I know you've been through a lot of injury lately and I know I have been as well. I'm 54, I'm getting old and I just had a massage literally two hours ago. That's one of the things that I always do now. Once a week I get a massage done, I get some cupping done, myofascia release. Tell us more about what you think is important for gals when they're trying to build muscle. They're trying to stay in this for the long term.

Hattie Boydle (01:58):

Yeah, so great question and I think as you named body work is a really important thing, but something that I've come to learn is what we do more frequently is going to get us a better result than what we do once a week or once every two weeks. So I must admit I'm pretty time poor and the people that I like to go to for my body work are also very busy. So fitting in external body work is quite challenging for me, but it's something that I highly recommend all my clients do. There's only so much stretching and our own foam roller work can do, but that kind of work is enough to create some subtle changes in the system and also allow us to feel that a little bit better as we move. So as we spoke about the previous episode, as I'm older now my gatekeeper to whether I can lift or not that day and actually kind of prepares my body for the work I'm going to get done or lets me know what my capacity is in a way is that preliminary work.

(03:02):

So I stretch now before I train. I do my core work before I train because the core work for me is functional as I've had, I've got two bolting discs and I've lost some of the fluid in the back of my disc and I still love to lift and I love to train heavy. The core work is the stuff that essentially goes, yeah, you are in a good position to now load your spine. So mobility work a big one as well. Especially as we pose, we need to increase upper thoracic rotation that's actually going to allow us to get more access to our shoulders. Even when we row, we've got more access to our thoracics that's going to help improve our ability to use our rhomboids. So mobility, stretching, I'm a fan of now and then as I

Michelle MacDonald (03:46):

Named, I do core work at the beginning. I'm actually going to butt in here and ask you a bit more about core work because I want to make sure that the listeners understand you're not doing cable crunches when you talk about core work. So let's talk about that so they understand what you mean exactly. Well,

Hattie Boydle (04:05):

You've got functional work, so anti-rotation work type of training that's going to improve your obliques or train your obliques so that they can help stabilize the pelvis. So something that we often see or symptoms of back pain is when the hips drop in a lunge or when there's rotation through the squat. And so if we are neglecting things like planks, planks are such an underrated exercise and there's so many advanced variations that we can work towards. We don't start at advance, we start at beginner that we work towards, that we know are going to improve both things like your serus, things like your shoulders, your ability to not rotate under load, which is going to allow us to lift heavier later on. So I'm a massive fan of side bends in your back extension or Russian twists or whatever they're called, planks side planks dish holds massive fan of dish holds side dish hold.

(05:01):

What the heck is a dish? Hold a dish hold. So I learned this in gymnastics funny enough, it's something now that I do for a lot of my preliminary work and it trains the TVA, it trains the rec abdominals, it trains your breathing. So a lot of people dunno how to brace properly under load. Learning how to breathe and brace is a big one, especially when we are doing competitions and we need to pull our stomach in and make our waist as small as possible and still we have to breathe on stage. These things actually carry over for me externally to training and building my body polo presses standing on one leg and doing some pressing movements, bird dogs, dead bugs, banded bedbugs, things that are going to train the lat and the cord work together because we also know that the lats assist in stabilizing the core when we squat and deadlift.

(05:49):

So when we look at functional ab work, we're not talking about just the crunch. Yes, you can crunch, that's not bad. You want to train your upper abs and your abs, but you also want to train the trunk to be able to neutralize the pelvis, stabilize the pelvis, and be able to breathe and handle heavy loads. So if you can't plank properly, it's very unlikely I'm going to put a bar on your back. And I think the mistake that a lot of trainers and PTs out there is their client comes to them and they want to squat and guess what they do? Cool, I'll let you squat and it's an absolute chale and breakdown later on. Instead of going, okay, you want to squat, great, show me how you move. Show me how you brace. Let's see how you can handle this load over here.

(06:32):

So all my clients do call work or my clients do functional call work. All my clients stretch, do mobility work because even if they're not injured now, guess what? I don't want 'em being injured later on. Our goal is to get our clients strong and move them as safely and effectively as we can while they build their bodies. Because as we get stronger, guess what happens? More load, more load on the spine, more load on the body, and we don't load the spine. We load the structures of the spine. That includes the upper back, the lats, the obliques, the TVA, the omas, multi fitters, and also the glutes. Okay. And this whole region from under here to essentially your pelvis, that all needs to be strong and stable for us to carry heavy loads.

Michelle MacDonald (07:19):

Yeah, great point. What about the shoulders? You mentioned the importance of making sure that you've got a lot of thoracic mobility. Everyone wants to build their shoulders at such a beautiful muscle, but we know that there's a lot of people getting injured in their shoulders, whether it's from posture or poor movement patterns or whatever. So can you talk a little bit about that as well?

Hattie Boydle (07:41):

Yeah, so a part of the assessment is can a client take their arms overhead without extending the spine? There are ways that we can cheat the system. The body will always do what you ask it to do, but it will only do that for so long as we know. And a lot of women who especially have breast implants and the implant has gone under the muscle, so it stretched the muscle. Guess what everything else does. It will move in that direction. And then we want to go load the shoulders. So getting even tissue work, even getting a ball into the pec miner because you can't stretch the pec miner, getting the scale released, doing thoracic extension from the middle of the spine around the world, getting some rotation up there. These are things that are going to help increase that range so that we can start to get the shoulders back.

(08:26):

And generally, I always start clients with what I call a structural balance approach to their upper body work. So it's one-to-one movement of push and pull horizontal one-to-one movement of push and pull, vertical pull, barbell to barbell, dumbbell to dumbbell, pronated to pronated, neutral to neutral as an example. And then we do accessory work of the deltoid in isolation or the triceps and the biceps in isolation. We also add in things like shoulder health exercises. There's things like dumbbell external rotation, cable, external rotation. But these exercises are there for, it's about technique here. It's not a hypertrophy exercise. You're not going to just start throwing extra.

(09:09):

Those exercises aren't for that, but they are great at improving the muscles of the rotator cuff, which are very important in stabilizing the shoulders. Too much push and enough pull. We know that we're going to get too internally rotated. Too much pull right from a vertical position, too much lat work, not enough mid-back work. Guess what we're going to do internally? Rotate the shoulder as well. So we often think about back to improve posture. We've got to pick the right exercise to improve posture, but we also need to make sure that this shoulder can actually move back behind the ear. So mobility work for the upper body, getting the frontier release, learning how to breathe properly. This is something that's really important. So women who get a lot of anxiety, women who have had cesareans and they haven't focused on improving their diaphragmatic breathing, they haven't learned how to diaphragmatically, breathe post baby, guess what?

(09:57):

Guess where they're going to be short and tight here. They're just mouth breathers, they're shallow breathers. Guess how that affects everything down there and your bracing ability. It's everything. So learning how to breathe through the nose, learning how to diaphragmatically breathe, that's actually going to minimize the tightness through the front of the neck. It's going to help minimize some of the tightness and the scalings. These actually all play their role and what happens to the position of the upper body? Going back to series one questions, what are the assessments that we look at with clients is what's their posture doing? What's the position of their head? How do we actually get our clients to be aware that we're not just always like this and we're like this, we've got a client that sits at a desk all day, guess what? We're going to help them be aware of.

(10:41):

What height is your computer? Is it down here? Is it up here? How can we get them learning how to sit upwards like this? And the other piece is how do we get them to extend to the thoracic and not the lower back? Because you might say to a client, open your chest or keep your chest open and they do this and yeah, they keep their chest open, but guess where it was from the lumbar. And so there's a really big miscommunication and it could just be neurological because they've been so jammed in this thoracic area that they don't know how to extend the spine in absence of the lumbar spine. So we need to try and break that up for people and it's a process and it's learning. It took me a really long time to do that. But these little things, they carry over in your ability to grow your shoulders in the same way that women who have really bad foot issues doing all this work to grow their glutes and they can't grow their glutes.

(11:33):

We have all these women doing all this upper body work and they've just got jack traps and no shoulders. That's just a sign that muscle's just grown because it's been taught to do everything because there's not enough strength around the rotator cuff. Not enough strength in the lower trapezius in the OIDs to help the scapula glide upwardly and downwardly around the grip cage. This way to stabilize the shoulder, right? So the training your back, training your shoulders, it's hard because we can't see it and we don't really know what's happening. Maybe we don't even know what it feels like, but a key to unlock that is mobility work is ensuring that we're sitting, we're aware of how we sit, how we stand, what our head position's doing. And then we use that work first before we then open up our ability to push and pull.

Michelle MacDonald (12:21):

Now I'm sure there's a lot of people that are going to be listening to this and they're going to think, oh gosh, I shouldn't be lifting any weights. And we want to be careful with that messaging as well. So what's the balance there between doing the work to either correct your posture, correct your imbalances, but also do resistance training? What would you say to people?

Hattie Boydle (12:41):

Great question. There's a thousand exercises.

Michelle MacDonald (12:46):

Yeah,

Hattie Boydle (12:46):

Just because you can't or you maybe you shouldn't lift over your head right now, doesn't mean you can't train your shoulders. A dumbbell front raise is going to hit the anterior position of your shoulder. Guess what? If you can lean back on a 80 degree incline and front raise, guess what you're going to do? You're going to train your shoulders and you're going to be able to train your shoulders in absence of hurting your shoulders because you're not lifting it overhead. Same thing with a dumbbell lateral raise. It just means that your exercise selection needs to be programmed to suit you with where you are now with the goal of getting you to be able to do this thing over here. So everyone should lift. Everyone should lift. We are designed to lift what the most important thing is. What is the exercise that is going to get you safely and effectively over here for now, because we know that when we look at a training, a block of training, we don't just do one program at a time.

(13:46):

We often start back from where we want to end. So if the goal later on is to be able to shoulder press praying free, guess what we're going to do? We've actually got to work our exercise selection back from that to the point where we go, well this is where we're going to start and this is where we're going to start. And this is the other things that we're going to do. We're going to work on mobility, we're going to make sure that they can lift safely and effectively. We're going to choose the right exercise that we're going to encourage scapular retraction and scapular depression and upward rotation. Pushups, such an underrated exercise. Inverted body rows such an under underrated exercise so hard, everyone wants to do a pull up. Cool. Make sure you can do an inverted row and a push up first. And if the goal is to pull up, cool, what do we need to do to get there?

(14:33):

Well, we start here and a part of that start here is your mobility work. And this is why I love a general preparation phase. The general preparation is let's see where you're at. Let's work to where you want to go. Let's look at the imbalances or the weak things or the places that need mobility where we need to free up. And then once we've improved mobility, guess what we do? We work in that new range because strength is gained in the range that it's trained. So if we are exploring new range, we now need to get strong in that new range, whether that be through improved ankle mobility, improved knee flexion, improved hip mobility, improved mobility through the shoulders, some people for a while couldn't get back here. Guess what we're going to do now we're back there. We're going to stay in there. We're going to strengthen that particular muscle group to encourage that new range to be explored, to encourage that new range to be strengthened.

(15:30):

And the best thing about starting here is that you know that each training block, there's going to be some sort of progression, some sort of new variation, whether that just be through pronator to neutral to super there. It doesn't have to be a massive difference, whether it be through body weight to dumbbell, to cable to barbell, it's so cool to in ways be a beginner because there's so much to progress on. It's a really cool thing. And if you're a trained person and you feel like you've really hit a plateau, it's not bad to go back to a general preparation phase. In fact, that phase is going to be the reason you surpass where you currently are later on. And the goal, like I said, is to stay in the game. How do you to keep playing the game, you keep learning.

Michelle MacDonald (16:13):

That's the goal. Another question, I'm going to play the devil's advocate. So you've got somebody that, they've got some movement pattern issues, they've got some kyphosis happening there in the upper back. Their shoulders are really rounded, their traps are developed, their glutes aren't really that developed. They should be. They're doing all these rls and everything. And so they're going to hear, alright, I've got to do all of this almost like prehab work and foundational work. But then didn't Addie said in episode one that intensity is also an issue, like gals aren't pushing themselves hard enough and that I should be getting this fall you made. So how do we clear through all of that and say, all right, the real takeaways gals, if you're in that boat, if you're in that boat, and a lot of my audience are going to be in that boat of they have been having a desk job or they've been carrying kids on their hip or they've got these issues with their body, and of course they don't want to get hurt, but they're desperate to gain muscle. So what are the 1, 2, 3 things that you would want them to pull from this so that they can leave and feel empowered? Okay, I'm going to do these things, these things, these things, and this is how I'm going to do it. Great

Hattie Boydle (17:26):

Question. Going back to podcast one, episode one, we don't punish what's strong, but we focus on what's weak. So we find the 1, 2, 3, 4 exercises for each training day that we can safely and effectively grow on and push intensity on. That's like the golden goose. But to get to the golden goose, we do the X, Y, Z of improving the hip mobility, the core work, the stretching, and then we have stability work, right? If there's an issue with stability, guess what we do? We do the stability work. And guess what? I'm actually, I'm going to do that at the front because that is a high priority and I need to do it while my focus is clear because later in a later stage, I'm still going to do stability work, but I'm going to do it when you're fatigued because you've already built the neural adaptations from doing it first here and you've allowed yourself to progress and you've improved in imbalance in your imbalances and then you do the work here.

(18:27):

So we don't take everything out. We don't just like, oh, I'm just going in. And we don't do that to people because the art of coaching is giving people what they want and what they need. So it goes back to we don't punish what's strong. We keep doing what's strong. We find the exercise that our client can do safely and effectively and that they love because training morale, that is a big piece. And we know in a way it's like, okay, I've just got to do this thing here, kind of like buys the ticket to do this thing here and then we progress. We know we're progressing, we know we're doing what we need and what we want so that for my ladies out there, you don't have to take everything away. You can still use intensity, but remember, sometimes we have to pull back this way a little bit more or allow us to progress over here and then we tailor our nutrition to support the demand of this thing.

(19:15):

So even if you've got to pull back volume a little bit, don't worry, you pull back food a little bit. If the goal is to fix some imbalances, stick to maintenance your maintenance calories, that's a safe place for you to be. And guess what? If you start losing weight, you can put a bit more load, add a bit more food. It doesn't just have to stay. We look at these different factors and we go, what is the most important thing? And something that I want to name, and I learned this from one of my best mentors again, and it was technique before load. So yes, I talk about intensity for building muscle, absolutely, but guess what? You have to earn before you put load on there. Technique. Technique before speed, technique before load. Technique is king that comes first. That will determine whether we're going to build the muscle or not, because as we talked about before, you could have all the load, but guess what's going to grow the muscle that's handling all the load and it might not be the muscle that you want. So that's just something like think of it like that. We don't have to take it all away, but we can't neglect the things that need work because you'll keep you in the lessons until you learn and eventually you'll have to learn if you want to progress in your

Michelle MacDonald (20:26):

Physique. I'm going to jump over to nutrition a little bit. I was listening to you today on your Instagram stories and guys, had he dropped some great wisdom, I don't know why you put all this great wisdom in an Instagram story. I hope you're saving it and you're putting it on other platforms where it's more permanent. Do you want to talk to you about it? Michelle, you're so brilliant. You're brilliant. And you were talking about comparison, how it can be useful and how it cannot be useful. And you were talking about builds. We have a very similar, I didn't realize that you were your curiosity to see just how high you can get your calories was peaked by Asha. Asha cooled hard and I was the same way with another WBF pro and she was, I'm going to eat 240 grams of carbs, which I thought back then was a lot.

(21:18):

Now I eat more than that, but that's what really got me going in a competitive way. I got to get my calories up. So I'd love you to talk a little bit about the genetics behind it. Also things like your training intensity, how much muscle you have, all of those things that can go into your calories, your macros, and then also how we can still try to ramp up our calories and things to look for and all of that. Because again, the gals that are listening to this, they know that they've got to eat more. And I think they're familiar that in this day and age, being skinny for when you're entering your forties, being underweight for your size is a very dangerous game, especially around bone health, right? So they know they don't want to be skinny, but it's still, we've got all this conditioning to be tiny, to be small, to not eat too much. I know my gals, the moment they start to lose their six pack, you never seem to lose your six pack, but I lose my six pack and it's like, ah, maybe I should stop the build. So tell us about nutrition and maybe some myths and some strategies also,

Hattie Boydle (22:22):

I think the first myth is that you need to push food before you push intensity. I think that's something that we've talked about. To just reiterate that I think it's more a misunderstanding than a myth of how important fats and carbohydrates are for building muscle. We know about protein proteins like again, the golden goose and the macronutrient that most people feel comfortable eating because we associated with lean muscle tissue. And yes, protein is a really important factor for growing tissue, but we can't neglect the importance of fats for hormones in our steroidal hormones. And they're essentially going to determine whether we actually are in a healthy position to build muscle too. So women tend to cut out fat. We have this low fat, fat diet. Even as I have clients that transition into a generous amount of energy availability, I go into their meal plan and they're eating low fat options.

(23:15):

I'm like, why are you eating low fat options? You literally have 75, 80, 90 grams of fat to eat, go and eat some saturated fat. Go and eat your poly and your monounsaturated fats. We need these for our hormones. So do not neglect fat. Fat is really important for our ability to synthesize our steroidal hormones. We need these to build muscle. So from a hormonal standpoint, fat is really underestimated and very important. Carbohydrates, I always talk about carbohydrates being one of the most amazing macronutrients to manipulate body composition. It is protein muscle sparing. It spares our muscle tissue, it helps regulate cortisol, it helps build our muscle, it helps fuel the tank, it helps fuel our performance. What do we talk about? Training intensity being one of the key components for improving body composition, whether it's to build muscle, maintaining muscle tissue. So we need to look at all of our macronutrients a whole, they play their role.

(24:12):

We need them to build this muscle. And if you are someone who is nervous about eating more food, find your maintenance. Find your maintenance, get comfortable there, push your intensity. Once you get fed up of not making any changes, add a little bit more food because you know got the basic, your intensity there and you know, got the base of your maintenance calories. And look, we can increase some lean muscle tissue at maintenance, but we don't maximize muscle potential. So yes, I believe slower is faster. That's what we know about the nervous system, but that's also what we know about our bodies. We can't force feed muscle, but we do need to feed the muscle and we do need to make sure that we are moving at a pace that is steady enough and enough to know that we are making changes. Because if it's too slow, you're going to get exhausted. If it's too fast, you're going to get scared. So one of the things that we look at for metrics is we look at the waist, we look at the glutes, we look at the quadriceps. Over time the waste may tinkle up. What we want to see is the quads and the glutes make far better millimeter changes, right? It's not going to be a centimeter at a time. It doesn't work that way. It's a millimeter, a millimeter, millimeter, millimeter. I tell my athletes it's like watching P dry once every week. Maybe

(25:35):

It's not this fast thing, but we need to see that those are transitioning up. So for my ladies here, once you've nailed how much protein you're eating, you're eating at least this is in kilograms, everyone at least two times your body weight in kilograms in protein, like I'm anywhere between two to two and a half times is a really nice amount. Pick your battle. And then we've got a generous amount of fats and carbohydrates coming in. Generally for fats no less than 0.8 times your body weight and kilos, I do like for a build anywhere between one up to 1.5 for clients and then your carbohydrates where they're kind of going to fill the missing pieces. But we also need to make sure that we are eating enough carbohydrates over time and that tends to be the macronutrient. I will push up first for clients when I'm really happy with their fat and protein intake because protein and fats are essential for the body.

(26:28):

Carbohydrates not so much, but carbohydrates are crucial for performance and building muscle. So the ketogenic diet is not superior for building muscle. It's not really superior at all. It's just a method for anyone that's listening. What we want to actually get for a balanced approach to our nutrition, a balanced approach to lots of different micronutrients coming into body for health and longevity is we want to get protein, fats, and carbohydrates. Now the thing that I want to touch on is just because someone else can eat more than you doesn't mean that what you're doing is wrong. You are your own individual body. You have your own history of what you put your body through. But please know if you really want to improve how much food you can eat, then follow a system, track your progress, be consistent with your intake, be consistent with your meal timings.

(27:19):

These one percenters. If you want to improve your body composition, they matter. Okay, someone who's worked with women for 18 years and worked with professional athletes, those one percents do matter. Even working with women who aren't getting ready for stage but want to look like they belong in the gym or they want to have an athletic physique, guess what these one percenters, they do matter. And so that meal timing, the training of your carbohydrates around your training windows, supportive of your training output, just ensuring that you're getting adequate calories in and then building from there. And of course making sure we are tracking out intensity. These are the things that we need to focus on. Don't worry about the supplements. Like supplements come. Yes, creatine is a great supplement, but guess what? It's useless if you haven't got the basics over here, right? Master the basics. Do what's in front of you at the best of your ability. When you need to do more, you can, but more becomes just more start with less master that

Michelle MacDonald (28:13):

Build from there. And I want to also tease out when we're talking about increasing calories, anyone can increase calories, but we want to caveat that, that you're trying to increase calories but maintain a certain output, a certain outcome. So do you want to describe that a little bit too? Because certainly don't want to cause an obesity epidemic here. Okay, great question.

Hattie Boydle (28:38):

Really great question. A question I get asked all the time is like how often do you increase your calories? And my answer is when we need to. So when we need to is when after at least three to four weeks, there's no change at all. When I know that wait long,

(28:54):

Yeah, I wait that long because I'm like, there's some weeks that just become this outlier and it's like, okay, I'm going to wait because it takes about two to three weeks for someone to plateau. So I work and I check in with my clients weekly, but I'm like, okay, at the three week mark, generally if nothing's changed and I mean nothing has changed, then I increase the calories. I'm very, very conservative with my approach to building muscle with my clients because a lot of them are trusting me that I'm the person that going to get the job done and I'd rather go slot. They say I've got all the time in the world, so I'd rather be more conservative. My client build trust in the process and we just slowly increase the food at each time that we need to then just add food in a little too early.

(29:45):

I know that clients, if I've done it after a two week mark and I've increased the food and then we've just had this massive jump and it's just been this massive jump in just total weight and even waste. I'm like, what's happened here? So I'd rather go at a more conservative approach. So I don't really change my client, I don't change my client's calories till I actually have to. And I've had a recent client, her name's Sherry. I'm going to give her a shout out. She's an absolute bloody legend. She is in her fifties and she's going back into a build. She was someone who was really scared to build muscle. Now she feels so empowered by building muscle and she's probably one of the most diligent clients I've ever had With nutrition. I do a spreadsheet and when you're within three grams of your macros, it's green, her sheet is just green.

(30:30):

And I look at her progress and it's like her waist has barely moved and she's just got these increases in her quads and glutes. I look at a training performance. There is always an increase, whether it be through reps or load. And the reps that I see increase each week are one or two reps. It's not these massive jumps in reps, it's not these massive jumps in weight. It's so subtle because she's working at such a high intensity that every week she's just trying to get that little bit more. And that's the intensity that I've trained her to work at. And then we deload and then we start again and we deload. And so we have this management plan of fatigue management, this management plan of sustainability. And we've only just increased her food just ever so light once every, I don't know, even four to six weeks.

(31:18):

And guess what her measurements are doing? She's just got this lovely filled out glutes, this lean waste in her fifties. She looks insane. She's got these crazy arms and it just goes down to how diligent she is in the process. And that's not being perfect. She's still learning so many things. I still have to encourage her to lift more on her squats and deadlifts and things like that, but he's progressing. And so I said to her, I was like, I don't need to change your food. Look at this, look at these metrics. Look at the last six weeks of these metrics. If I push more food, I'm just going to see the waist go up far quickly. Like fat is more sensitive to calories than what muscle is. Unfortunately, if it was only the other way we could force insulin, but this is just the way it is. So how and when do we increase food? Only when we need to. Only when everything is completely plateaued. And only when you are a hundred percent consistent do not change your food. If you were inconsistent, you haven't earned the right, it's the same in a deficit,

Michelle MacDonald (32:12):

Not just a build. So it sounds probably one of the most challenging aspects of building muscle and becoming strong is really understanding where these 1% gains are and the importance of them understanding that. It's a really long slow process and you have to be incredibly strategic. And probably even more so for people that are listening that are older and wanting to get started in this or they're started but they want even more benefits. You've just got to really give in. You've got to kind of surrender to this entire process, which is a really long investment and you've got to find the joy in it. Of course, you got to love what it is that you do. Do you want to finish and talk a little bit about the mindset? How do you stay passionate? How do you coach your clients? I mean, if they're like, Hey, I want it, I want it. Can we get this done in six, seven months? And then you're like, well, can you give me, I don't know, what do you say one or two years? How do you get them excited to invest that much time? Do look

Hattie Boydle (33:13):

Like what do? And then I say, cool, that's enhanced. I've had clients send me photos. I'm like, even with drugs, you're not going to get there in a year. You'd get there in five years. That physique. I think there's a really big misunderstanding. Unfortunately the truth around even if you are enhanced how long it does take to get to that stage. But the thing that I always, I want to, I guess expose to everyone is find joy in the challenge. Take the responsibility. One of the praise empowerments that we can have is ownership of the choices that we make and the ability to build this machine. Trust me, I get frustrated as a hell at my body at times, but God, am I grateful that I get to go through this challenge with it. There's no other. It's just this challenge that I'm like, okay, what can I do better?

(34:11):

What am I in control of? And if I'm going to have this body for the next 50 years, which we all do, we don't just have it for this 12 week journey, we've got it forever. Because guess what? The process that got you here is a very similar process that's going to get you here. We talk about being a game, find joy in the game. Learn how to play the game. Learn how to love playing the game, okay? Enjoy the responsibility of what it takes to build your muscle. Find pride in working hard. Work hard to work hard. Don't just work hard because you want this thing on the other end. That's like a 12 week challenge that's going to be very short-lived. Guess what? As soon as you hear that goalpost what you think, you're not going to have to keep working hard. It doesn't fit that way.

(34:52):

And so the goal is to find joy in the challenge. The goal is to be responsible and proud of learning to work with your body through all of its physiological changes that we go through and saying whether we have to learn about a menstrual cycle. We're going to have to learn about perimenopause and menopause and we're going to have to find ways to navigate and work with it. The body's not over, but it does require care and it requires care and it requires love. And love is going to build that body even through the periods of frustration because guess what? We get frustrated at our kids and we love them to death. We get frustrated at our partners. We love them to death. We get frustrated out of our dogs. We love them to death. We're going to get frustrated with ourselves. We have to learn to love ourselves as well. And so if you have this grand vision of yourself, the only way you're going to get there is by you learning to get there. And it's a mountain that we should be willing to climb. And if you're not willing to climb it, that's fine, but don't talk about it. Don't complain about the work you're not willing to do. Be inspired by what others are doing. Don't pull them down for the work they're doing. This is something we often see on the internet.

(36:02):

Take responsibility and ownership of yourself and learn to climb the mountain. There are so many people that are willing to help. We've got Michelle Lean the way we've got Joan, lean the way I hope that I can lead some. And so the beautiful thing is that we get to choose what we get to do through all the wonderful challenges that are going to present itself as we work on building these wonderful machines that we have the honor to live

Michelle MacDonald (36:23):

In. Hattie, we could go on and on and on. I just love having you on the podcast. The people that are listening here, where can they find more information? I know we mentioned it's a course, right? Training the female athlete.

Hattie Boydle (36:40):

Yeah, so Train the Female Athlete might sound like a pretty scary name, but essentially what it means is you can be your own athlete, learn to be your own athlete, learn to encourage yourself to track your nutrition, measure your progress, get strong, fuel your body for performance. This is essentially the principles of what Train the Female Athlete is. It's progression of overload. It's learning about ourselves. It's like I said, fueling for performance. We can learn about our physiology in there. We've got a lot of mindset work in there. It is a course that was designed that anyone can do. You don't have to be a coach yet. We work with many coaches. And if you are a coach and you do want to do this course, the feedback that I get was, thank you for making it so easy to learn. Now I can go and apply it to myself and my coaches.

(37:28):

And on the flip side, if you're not a coach and you think it's going to be too advanced, I promise it's not. We designed it so that it was so easy to absorb because we want people to take this information and use it straight away. We want you to be able to apply it on Monday. So training female athlete, you can find a link in my bio or you can head to Clean Health and you can find my course there. And then if you do want to work with me at Flex Method, of course you can find me at flex method or just reach out on my social media.

Michelle MacDonald (37:54):

Perfect. Well make sure that we leave those links in the episode in the notes as well. So I know my coaches are always looking for new courses to take and definitely your is going to be on the top of the list. Hattie, thank you so much for coming. I'm going to see you in Australia, right?

Hattie Boydle (38:11):

Yeah, you are.

Michelle MacDonald (38:12):

Yes, I am Rich. I can't wait. I can't wait. So exciting. I'm hoping that we can come for like two weeks this time. Thank you for being on the show. Guys, listen to episode one if you missed it. And I hope you got a lot of great content. Thanks again, Hattie.

Hattie Boydle (38:26):

Thank you.

Michelle MacDonald (38:31):

Another unbelievable episode with Hattie. I'm definitely going to have her back on show. And guys, here are the top three things that stood out to me from this episode. Number one, you got to prioritize self-care for longevity. And as a 54-year-old I concur, building muscle isn't just about lifting heavy, it's about keeping your body healthy long-term. You got to do the mobility work, stretching, functional core training. These are all essential to staying injury-free and making sustainable progress. Number two, smart training technique before load. Can't say this enough. Lifting heavy is important, but only when your technique is solid. Hattie really emphasizes the importance of movement quality, right? So how you're moving through an exercise, your core engagement. And she talks about gradually improving range of motion before you add more weight. So that's important. And the third thing is fueling your body for performance. Nutrition isn't just about protein.

(39:25):

Healthy fats are crucial for hormone function. Carbohydrates, they also play a huge role in recovery, performance and muscle growth. Increasing calories strategically based on progress is key to building muscle without unnecessary back gain. So there's a lot going on when it comes to fueling your performance and building muscle. Thanks for listening to Stronger By Design. If you enjoy the episode, again, please leave a rating or a review. It's going to help others discover the show. And if this conversation gave you some new insights, share it with a friend who wants to learn more about how to get strong and build muscle safely. See you next time.