Let's Get Moving: PART TWO || Episode 27

Beth shares realistic, approachable ways to begin incorporating strength training into your routine—no matter your starting point—and what to focus on to create sustainable, lasting results. This is your foundation episode, setting the stage for upcoming guided workouts designed to help you feel stronger, more capable, and more confident in your body.

If you’ve been unsure where to start, this is it.

Connect with Beth Drayer:
Website: www.BethDrayer.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BethDrayerMovement
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BethDrayerMovementNutrition
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BethDrayer

Follow Menopause Unscripted:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/menopause.unscripted
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@menopause.unscripted

Connect with @HeyDrHeidi:
Website: https://www.heydrheidi.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heydrheidi
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@heydrheidi
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Hey-Dr-Heidi/61568353334042/?utm_campaign=social_link_list&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=later-linkinbio

Menopause Unscripted is a women’s health podcast hosted by Dr. Heidi, the creator of Hey Dr. Heidi. Each episode delivers expert insights, real-life stories, and evidence-based information to help women navigate perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause with confidence.
This podcast covers topics such as menopause symptoms, hormone replacement therapy, pelvic health, sleep changes, intimacy and relationships, osteoporosis prevention, brain fog, mood shifts, and healthy aging. With a focus on science-backed advice and approachable conversation, Menopause Unscripted offers clarity, support, and practical tips for every stage of midlife.

Whether you are experiencing early menopause symptoms or seeking resources for post-menopausal health, Menopause Unscripted is your trusted source for reliable information and open conversation.

Want to be on the show?
Think you’d be a great guest or know someone with an important story to share? Email us at connect@heydrheidi.com.

-----
Produced By Stray Kat Studio & Katherine Donovan
straykatstudio.com
https://www.youtube.com/@stray.kat.studio

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Thanks for joining me on Menopause Unscripted. Remember, the change is just another beginning. Welcome back to another week of Menopause Unscripted. I'm Dr. Heidi and I'm joined again this week with my good friend Beth Dreyer. She is an athletic trainer and she specializes in age-related wellness. Thank you so much for coming back. Thanks for having me back.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Super stoked.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Could you tell our audience, if they're just meeting you, just a little bit about yourself and just realizing that someone might be coming into this and not watched our first episode?

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Sure. Like you said, I'm an athletic trainer. Working mostly with active aging, but um have worked everything from pediatrics to um geriatrics. So uh have run the gamut, but mostly working with people, getting them out of pain, moving better, feeling better, getting back to activities that they want to be doing.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Love it. It's making people happy.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Yes, makes me happy to make people happy.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

So it's so nice, and we live in this place that has such a great active aging community. We work in a fantastic location.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Fantastic work location. We do not have two feet of snow.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Or be negative 27. Yes.

unknown 1:10

All of those things.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

All those things. I know as you probably can see from the shot, it's a beautiful day outside. So, but we're inside, and today what we're gonna be doing is Beth is gonna be showing us part two of a wellness and movement related series that we're doing. Last episode, if you haven't found it, scroll back a few weeks because it was basically getting someone from off the couch and just starting, beginning movement, weight bearing, starting some uh false prevention, bone-related wellness and health. And today we're gonna take that same exercise progression. We're just gonna progress it to the next level. Perfect. Could you show us the little thing that you came up with? This is such a coach and trainer thing. And if you haven't seen a whiteboard, here's Beth's whiteboard for today. Love my whiteboard. Love a whiteboard. Love a whiteboard. So Beth is gonna take us through some movements. I may be kind of in and out of frame just based on shooting, but we're gonna go through this. If you are gonna be following along today, know that you can pause, stop if you want to grab some things. What do we need for exercise equipment today?

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Uh I think today uh at the very end we're gonna need some moderate weight, something like a gallon of milk or ideal, but if you don't have that, we can start with like a can of soup, maybe even like the big can of pumpkin. Ooh. Like the 15-ounce can of pumpkin.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah. And in weight transition, like if someone's using hand weights, what would that translate to? Um, that's probably that's two pounds, I think.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

The big can, a regular can of soup is a pound. Okay. Um, just something, you know, around there. I think the gallon of milk is somewhere around six pounds, actually.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

I was gonna say I was thinking around eight, but yeah, it could be six to eight.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Okay. Eight sounds good. Yeah. So yeah. So just something that you can hold on and and hold on to.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

And feels like moderate to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, feel like moderate to you. So yeah. Doesn't need to be super heavy right quite yet.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Okay. Anything else we need for equipment?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

A mat if you don't like being on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Okay. And if you do like being on the floor, go for it. All right.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah. If you have a dog. Uh the other thing you might want uh like something to hold on to. So like even a chair, if you have a chair nearby, um, I'll probably use like a foam roller just to kind of like give some balance if needed. Uh, other than that, we're pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

All right, awesome. So this is a great place to pause if you want to pause and grab those things. So mat, some moderate to you weights, it could be obviously hand uh household items, yeah. And something for balance, so wall, chair, foam roller, etc. Yeah. So pause here if you need to grab stuff and then join us for some movement.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

Sweet. So the first thing we're gonna do, we're gonna do some things to warm up.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

I always like to start with the neck and head because that actually controls most of our movement. So, uh, and do some things with that. But so we're gonna start in a cobra position. So um I'm not super picky as far as that, as far as hands down. Uh hands, I don't really like hands up, but like thumbs up, you can do whatever's comfortable for you. I want you to be uh elbows under your shoulders and elbows at 90 degrees. That's what I care about. And then you are going to bring your chin down to your chest. Hi, fuzzy guy. And then chin up to the ceiling as far as you can go. I want you to initiate those movements with your eyes. So eyes are down, now they're gonna go up, eyes are coming down, heads coming down. So we just sort of synchronize that together. I'm not big on giving numbers. As far as you need to do ten of these, do these so they feel good. If it takes more than 10, sweet.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

If it takes seven, sweet. Uh next is gonna be a swimmer.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

So now we're gonna go flat on the mat. And you're gonna start with your arms above your head. You're gonna come out to the side, touch your butt. Hopefully, you can. Bring your arms up as high as you can, up to your armpits, back up again.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Now you've got your head raised. Is that because you have a microphone or are you trying to show up? So would you generally have your forehead on?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yeah, I would be here. Eventually, I actually do like people holding their head up just to have that extra butt to start with. We're gonna let you put your head down. Okay. Yeah. Those are gonna be hard for a lot of people. Those are really good for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

If someone has shoulder impingement, do you have a modification that you like?

SPEAKER_02 5:43

That's a good question. I don't want to force pain. There's a range of motion that's uncomfortable. I'm okay with uncomfortable to try to get through some range of motion. Um, you don't have it, it sort of depends on where that impingement is. If it's if it's when you're here and that's like just come to your side, come up. If you can't get it all the way to your back, that's probably just get as far as you can and come back up. Got it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

I feel like the therapeutic discomfort I'm always okay with, but I tell people it's like there's a difference between discomfort and pain.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Yeah, if it's sharp shooting type of pain, don't do it.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Yeah. Yeah. So next we're gonna do some rocking.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Okay, so these is this is gonna be rocking. I like to go uh wider than the mat, so I'm gonna turn this way. Um hands are gonna be underneath your shoulders. I like my toes tucked because then it gets a little bit more of a stretch in the foot as well. Um, but if that's not available for you, you can go flat. If that's not available, do what you can. But I like getting that stretch in to the toes. First, I'm just gonna come forward, straight forward, straight back, nice and easy, but then I like to go side to side. And this is kind of really where the money's at. You're gonna just sink into that hip, try to get that glute down to that heel on each side. And then the other really good thing about this is that you can come as far forward as you can and try to get into those wrists and forearms that we don't actually pay much attention to.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

You mentioned closed chain. Yep. Can you explain that really quick for people who don't know the difference? For sure.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

So a closed chain exercise is we're gonna use uh the arm is when your hand is planted to the ground and you're doing movement at the shoulder with your hand planted, so that's a closed chain, so the whole chain is closed. An open chain would be like an arm circle where the hand is floating in the air and the movement's coming from the shoulder, but it's open chain, so there's nothing going on over here.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

Nothing fixing the hand down. Nothing fixing it down. Yeah. Got it.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Now we're gonna do uh we're just like a general basic rotation and then side to side. Think about rotating shoulders first, then from the hips. So it's coming side to side as far as you can. You really want to be able to get as far as you can. Then you can kind of add your arms in and just sort of relax and let them go side to side. This is like one of those Tai Chi things, and then you can do move the water or the cloud, whatever this is. I like move the water. I like move the water too. I think about being in a pool and how much like resistance like that actually takes. But anyway, so just nice loosen up, just rotate back and forth, you'll start to feel all loose and good.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

Last thing we're gonna do is bouncing.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

If you need balance, you can put the foam roller in front of you. If you want just a little bit of balance, you can put it at the side. If you need more balance, you can go to the wall, whatever is appropriate for you. But I just want you to bounce.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Arms loose, or like if you can, like arms loose, and if not, like yeah, arms loose if you can.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

If you need to balance, that's fine. But arms loose, you're just think about being rhythmic. Like it shouldn't be like your heels like pounding the floor. Your heels really shouldn't touch. Okay, you're just gonna stay nice and loose, and you can even add some shoulders with that, kind of go back and forth, whatever's comfortable for you.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Talk about bone health for a second and like how bouncing and rebounding can kind of like help us with osteoporosis, osteopenia, bone health. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

So, first piece of that is actually just using um, because it's a lot of your calf muscle, right? And that's like your second heart. So that's a lot of blood flow, helps with lymph flow and stuff as well. Um, and then this is basically prepping you to be able to do some more high-impact stuff, which is really helpful with bone health. So um bone grows when it has um pressure. So the more pressure we put on the bone, the more it's going to be able to stimulate the things that need to grow it. So um this is the beginning pieces of starting that process. So we finished the warm-up, so we should feel like we got some blood flow going. Um, usually takes about five to ten minutes if you go through all that. So um, pretty simple, but you can kind of determine what you need for you. That's part of this, is learning what your body needs as well. So um now we're gonna get into the workout. First thing we're gonna do, and I'm gonna actually review real quick what we did last time, which was a split squat. So that was gonna be you're gonna start kind of wide, and you're just gonna drop that back knee straight down. This time we're now moving forward. So we want to get as far forward on this knee as we can. So we're gonna be almost in that same position, but now we're gonna come as far forward, trying to keep that heel down as best we can and getting that knee as far over our toes as possible. I like the pause at the bottom. If you can't pause right now, no big deal. But it in my mind it actually helps you kind of balance, get your bearings, and then you can kind of push back up as you come back up.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Can you talk to us just a minute for about like getting the knees over the toes? Because there's a lot of people who don't know about getting knees over their toes. Yeah, there's a lot of debate about is that good for our knees, is it not? So, can we just pause for a second and talk about it?

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Absolutely. One of my favorite questions. It is important to get your knees over your toes. Um, walking your knees go over your toes. So, like most positions that we get into really do get your knees over your toes. Somebody back in the 70s did an experiment and did um they measured the force on the patella at different angles, and when the knee was bent over the toe in that position, that's when it had the most force on the kneecap, but they never correlated it to pain, injury, or anything of that extent. They just assumed that that there was, since there was more force, that would cause more injury. It has been since proven that is not the case. So for a long time the norm was don't let your knees go over your toes. But if you want to go into a squat and not let your knees go, I'm gonna have to hold on because I can't do it, and not let your knees go over your toes, like it's literally impossible. But if you let your knees come over your toes, you can get into a good squat position.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

So now we're gonna do a push-up.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Um last time we did um elevated push-ups off of the bench. Um this time we're gonna go down to the floor, and um, I'm gonna show you two variations. One is a slightly easier one than the other one, and you can choose which one you want to move to at this point. Um, if you still want to stay with the incline ones, great. Like you can do incline push-ups for the rest of your life, and I'm happy. Um, but this just makes it slightly harder. So um, so the first one's gonna be um hands are gonna be under your shoulders, uh knees are gonna be on the ground, feet are gonna be together, but you're still gonna be in that nice plank kind of position. So think about being here and then just dropping your knees so you're in that plank, and then you're gonna bring yourself down and push back up. Uh, chest pass in basketball, like you want to push, we're not pushing from out here. We don't do anything from out here. This is not athletic. This is athletic. So, again, hands are gonna be under shoulders, you're gonna come back down and back up. Try not to let your elbows go out to the side. We like to keep them closer to the body. If that's getting easy and you want to start challenging yourself more, you're gonna go back up into that full plank position, and then you're gonna come down.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Down, come back up. Now we are going to do a single-leg deadlift.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

If you need something to balance with, chair, foam roller, wall, all good. Um, what you are going to do, you are going to stand on one foot. I like to have my eyes in front of me, so I'm going to look usually where the floor meets the wall. Keep my eyes there because where your eyes go, your head goes, where your head goes, your body goes. So if you're looking at your foot, you are more likely to fall than if you can keep your gaze straight ahead of you. So I'm going to have you on one foot. I want you to think about keeping your hips closed, so keeping them parallel to the floor the whole time. You're going to reach your other foot back. Whoa, Beth, and you're going to try to touch down. Your foot's not going to go anywhere, so if you know where your foot is, you can reach it every time. You don't have to look at it. You're going to reach back. You're going to reach with your opposite hand. So if you need to balance, you're going to use the same side hand so you can keep your hips closed. If you use the same side, people tend to half moon. Great movement, not what we're doing here though. So this is really about being able to come forward, reach down. You're going to feel some tension in your hamstrings. You're going to use your glutes and hamstrings to come back up.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Functionally, what are some things that this would help us with with function? I mean, the list is long.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Like a few things. I'm thinking dog poop bags again. I was gonna say, like, this is going back to picking up dog poop again, but it's gonna get you back into that position, right? So you can balance on that, you can reach down, come back up, kind of thing. Um, because you can kind of advance this in a few different ways as far as um the movement itself, but yeah, being able to pick up the poop again, just picking things up in general.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

Um, where are we going next?

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Next, we're going to do a reverse plank. Alright. Um, so you're gonna go back down on the floor. Um you're gonna have your hands underneath your shoulders again. Um for this one, I usually like fingers forward. Uh, it makes it slightly more difficult, I think. If that's too hard, hands back, you can start, that's fine. Um, whatever kind of hand position to get you to be able to do it, I'm good with. But eventually, this is the ideal position. And basically, what you're gonna do, your legs are gonna be out in front of you, and you're gonna lift your hips up so you're in a nice straight line again, from your heels all the way up to your ears, basically, and you're gonna hold that. The next thing we're gonna do, we're gonna now grab whatever those moderate weights are that you decided to choose. Pick these down, pick these up properly. So we're not just gonna bend over and pick things up. We're here to do things the right way. So we're gonna bend our knees, we're gonna keep the weights at our side, we're gonna use our legs and we're gonna lift up, and then we're just gonna walk. So you're gonna keep the weights nice and relaxed at your side. I don't want your again, shoulders out of your ears for pretty much everything we do, but shoulders down, out of your ears, and then you're just gonna walk forward. You don't need to take exaggerated steps, you're just gonna kind of walk like you normally would. Your step might be even a little bit smaller, that's fine. Then you're gonna walk backwards. So this is great, especially if you don't have a lot of space, you're just gonna go back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

And I feel like this would be another really good one if you didn't have moderate weights, you could just practice with like your grocery bags.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Absolutely. And this is probably like that. My example for why this is functional. Like, this is as functional as it gets for carrying every bag of groceries from your car back into your house because only you only want to do one trip. This is this is why we do it.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

But also, like, what kind of compensation things do people need to look out for for like what they need to be making sure that they are doing form positive?

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Yeah, so you don't want a lot of like sway, you don't want your arms kind of like swinging like we normally do. This is actually gonna keep your arms pretty much at your side, you don't want a lot of twist. This is actually trying to keep you from twisting and building up that stability in your core, so it shouldn't be like a lot of this. You want to be nice and stable so you can have a good foundation. Think about carrying all those bags, you want all that to be able to move off a stable base. I like it doing it at their side. There's other ways you can do carries. Um, an example would be like a uh front rack position. This is called front rack position. Um, so if you're taking your purse and every other bag up onto your shoulder, we're here. Um, and then this one is not as daily functional, would be overhead. So if you're gonna be here, you want that arm nice and straight. Think about like bicep to ear. But unless you're carrying your kid in like airplane position, uh, I don't know if there's a ton of functionality for that one.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

I think a lot about putting things into overhead um compartments and airplanes. For sure, for sure. That's what I see here.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

But we're not carrying it in that position necessarily. I think still being able to do it, I think. Being able to do it a hundred percent, a hundred percent. That motion is important, but you're not usually walking down the aisle with your suitcase over your head looking for the spot, like yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

Uh so the last thing really, I'm just gonna move these out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Um, we are gonna do so. This is actually the progression from the bouncing. It's just gonna be some hopping. Um, and at first it's literally like before we were just bouncing, toes were staying down. Now we're just gonna add toes coming off the ground. That's the minimum of what we're gonna do. You can start to make things more interesting for you if you'd like. You can. I usually like this floor is great because it's it's has slats, so you have lines, so you can just pick a line and go forward and backward over that line. Then when all that is easy. Then you can go to one foot and you can do all that same stuff on one foot. So there's a lot in this world of hopping that doesn't need to be a lot of work. And again, start with 10. Just do 10 hops, then rest.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Well, I am back. I'm the disembodied voice you've been hearing chatting along as we go along. We just realized it's way too hard in like this small studio space to film us both. So I'm back. You can hear my commentary for the last hour. So thank you again for being here. Absolutely. It's so much fun. Appreciate it. I am so excited. We're gonna do what, maybe two more parts in the little series. Yeah. Yeah. So look forward to like two more parts. We're gonna kind of sporadically roll these out. The idea being hopefully you can do one workout series for a bit and then we progress. And we'll do that a couple more times. If you're just finding this now, go back to the original and they're in order. So then you can start with one. If you think about this like a rehab experience, do that for a few weeks. When you're ready, go to number two, three, four. So look forward to Beth coming back and sharing her wisdom with us. I'm looking forward to it.

unknown 23:07

Me too.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Me too. I mean, it's like so nice to have conversations about things like knees over toes and bone health. You know, I love it. It's awesome. So thank you all again for being here for another week of Menopause Unscripted. We'll see you next week with another topic, and we will welcome Beth back very soon. Thanks for having me. Do you have a last thought for us in our audience? Just keep moving.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

So even if some of this stuff is hard and not to your level yet, no problem. Just keep moving.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And pain.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Don't get frustrated with it.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Don't get frustrated. And I would say, like, therapeutic discomfort is normal. Normal, but we just don't want we don't want pain.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

No, we're trying to keep you out of pain for a long time. The whole life. That's the whole point.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

On your feet, not falling, out of pain, picking up your dog poop.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Yeah. That's probably the most important thing. I hate when people leave it. No, it's worse. And then you step in it. Don't even.

unknown 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

You'll hold up your thing. Well, thank you again. We really appreciate you being here. Uh, you could like, follow, and subscribe to us on all the channels. If you happen to be listening to this on an audio podcast, please go to YouTube where you can watch all of this and realize the full video is there for you. So hopefully you still got something out of this by listening to the conversation that we're having. But if you want to follow along, YouTube is your place to go. For sure. Have a great week. Me too. Now I have to end with the boring stuff. While I am a doctor, I am not your doctor. This podcast is for entertainment and educational purposes only. If something in today's episode resonated with you, please bring this to your own healthcare team and self advocate. You always are promoting that. I cannot wait for you to join me on next week's episode of Metapause Unscripted for another hot topic.