#27 Hattie Boydle - Devotion Over Discipline and How to Become a Champion

In this inspiring episode, we are honoured to have Hattie Boydle as our guest. She shares her journey from overcoming personal struggles to becoming a world champion bodybuilder, helping, inspiring and educating hundreds and thousands of women worldwide. She discusses the importance of mindset, discipline, self-compassion, and how bodybuilding teaches resilience and internal growth.

We are not exaggerating when we say this episode has the power to change your life - so we cant wait for you to listen!

If you are not subscribed to the show please do subscribe because it really helps us grow and be able to continue to sit with incredible guests like Hattie.

If you want more from Hattie (which we highly recommend you go and binge all her content because its amazing) - you can follow her on instagram, check out her company Flex Method and listen to her podcast The Hattie Boydle Podcast by clicking each individual link below

Hattie's Instagram

Flex Method

The Hattie Boydle Podcast

If you want to check out Emily and Tash - you can follow us on Instagram below :)

Em's Instagram

Tash's Instagram

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back to Mindset Meets Muscle. I am Emily, and honestly, I have been looking forward to this episode so much. This conversation is going to be incredible because this guest embodies everything that we talk about on this podcast. Not only is she building a strong body, but she also has an incredible strong mindset alongside with it. And there are so many people in this fitness space who train hard, but very few people communicate the why behind it, the deeper layers of discipline, self-respect, and the growth of the way she does.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

And I think what stands out so much about her is that she doesn't just represent physical strength, she represents emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and grounded confidence in what you can tell truly has been built over time. She's an FMG world champion, co-founder of Flex Method, alongside her now husband. Congratulations. And also now stepping into the public speaking space as well, which we're so excited to dive into today. Patty, we are honestly so grateful to have you here. Both Emily and myself look up to you so much. You're such a role model to us. And welcome to Mindset Meets Muscle.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Like I shared with you guys just before this, like I'm so honored. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that you girls reached out to me. And also, it's always so lovely to hear that maybe I'm still doing a good a good job. I'm like, I've been doing this for so long. I've been in the industry for a real long time, 19 years actually, which is just so wild. It's nearly two decades. And um it's such a privilege. It's such a privilege to be here and to be speaking to you girls and also to your amazing community who care so deeply about the things that we are all interested in, which is how do we not just build a body? How do we transform? How do we have this? How do we let the external and the internal meet in the middle and transfer together? Because so often we we can change the external and we recognize why do I not feel different? Right. And your beautiful podcast, which is like mind muscle, it's well, how do we incorporate this thing together? And I always always look at bodybuilding as a really spiritual experience. And we'll probably talk a little bit more about that today. But I think that's how you can really start to look at everything, you know, how much of the internal world shapes the external world. And then how do we transfer that into your training or your language or your habits and all that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

So very excited. I know that me and Tasha is gonna be sat here watching you and smiling the whole time. We're gonna be like, Yes, we agree with everything. I'd love to take it back a little bit because I think when people look at you now, they see almost like an end result because you look phenomenal. You've done really, really well, you've had incredible discipline, amazing success, but also the way you talk and the way you articulate is just phenomenal. But they potentially don't see the journey behind that and how you've come to where you are now. Can you talk a little bit about your background and your experiences that have really shaped you as the person you are today?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah, so I often laugh that the thing I've done most in my life is training. Yeah. I was put into gymnastics when I was four years old. And gymnastics taught me so many call so many of the qualities that I use today in training. It taught me skill development, it taught me being process-driven, it taught me practice, it taught me discipline, it taught me how to be a high achiever and have hard work. It taught me how to fail forward. And that was a big pivotal moment in my upbringing. So I was very sporty as a child. I was a very muscly little child. I loved using my body as an instrument. So that created a really strong foundation. There was a moment in my life where I got really sick. So when I think back to this, it was my first time. It was my first time understanding death. Now, I feel like I have a very healthy relationship with death these days, which is when I'm met with someone who's past, it reminds me of how special life is. Of course, I grieve the person, but I'll be like, okay, am I doing everything that I can to fulfill this life? And when I was 16 years old, a very good friend of mine, she passed away in a freak accident. And I remember thinking, my God, life can be taken away so quickly. I'm going to get good grades, go to school, um, go to uni, start exercising again, look after my nutrition. Like there was this, the overarching theme was I'm gonna be the best version of myself without knowing that type of language at 16. But really what it was was, how do I control everything? Because this is out of control. Like as I zoom out as I'm older, I'm like, oh, it was I was met with deep uncertainty of how can this person be here one day and and not the next? And that was my way of grieving. It was how do I stay in control? And I think something that a lot of women do, and I'm curious if anyone listening to this podcast or this episode goes, oh shit, this is my that's my experience too, is when life is messy and chaotic, what's the first thing we want to do? We want to control Yeah, whether it's our food, our exercise, how how much we weigh. And we think that if we control that, everything else will be okay. And essentially that's what I was doing. I was controlling everything so much. And there was good intent, you know, I'll start exercising, I'll look after my nutrition. And I was reading diet magazines, which had no nutritional value in there whatsoever. But anyway, and I started, you know, wanting to get good grades at school because I was really naughty at that time. And I remember my teachers going, Oh my god, like what's happened to you? Like you're sitting at the flight, you're not talking to your friends, you're not throwing chairs out the window. Like I was really naughty. And I remember getting ready for an exam. And I'm like, I'm gonna do so well at this. I want to do really well. And I studied and studied and studied, and I remember failing that exam. It was a public speaking event, actually. Oh well. And I remember thinking to myself, see, no matter what you do, you're just not good enough. That was the first time I ever was met with a part of me that said, no matter what you do, you're just not good enough. And so I was met with trying to control all these things. This part part of me that said, you're not good enough. And those two things were really self-destructive. And so self-destructive-destructive that I led it in hospital. And I had severe anorexia. So I got to that very low point. And of course, through breakdowns, we create breakthroughs. And I remember being like, what the fuck have I done? But there was a moment where I was like, okay, at the end of the day, I got myself in there. I was like, I got myself in here and said it's the most powerful tool that you have. I'm not here by chance, I'm here by choice. And it was the accumulation of the choices that I was consistently making every single day, minute by minute, hour by hour, that was destroying me. And so, with that kind of like epiphany, I guess, I was like, shit, like shit. And I kind of recognized, all right, so what needs to be done? Because I was in hospital and I wasn't allowed to do anything except what they told me to do. And I hate being told what to do unless I asked for help. And so I used this thing called mindset. And I was like, well, if this is the powerful tool, what do I need to do to get myself out? And that's where a lot of my work or the choices, the choices we make. And I think that's one of the most kind of empowering or powerful things that we can always return to, which is I own my choices. Radical responsibility is something I talk about all the time. Being wholly responsible for who we are, not our circumstance, like being who we are in our circumstances. So most of the time that we look in the mirror and we don't like what we see, it's from the choices that we're in a given moment, we can choose to not do that. Right? So being in hospital, I kind of looked around. I was like, okay, I'm not the only one suffering here. I have to get out to help these girls. It was like this, oh my God, I'm strong enough to suffer, but you're not. I don't know if anyone has that kind of model of yourself. It's like, oh no, no, no, give the suffering to me, I can handle it. Don't you suffer? It's like if we want to fix everything. Well, I needed to fix myself before I could fix others. And so when I eventually got out of hospital, which was about nine months later, um, I enrolled myself into my PT cert. And that's how I got into personal training. And then a couple of years later, I got into the online space and I've had multiple businesses there. And I started, you know, uh physique competing or fitness comp um being becoming a fitness competitor. Because once I got healthier, you know, I was met with, oh, there's this thing over here that requires training and competing. It kind of reminded me of gymnastics. And that's kind of how I led into, you know, the chemistry was pretty much from that big breakdown. Just realizing there was some pretty poor information being shared on the internet, or on the internet, sorry, the magazines that we were reading at that. I'm not the only one suffering in this. You guys are suffering too. There's a hole somewhere. There's something that's being fed to us that is not healthy. Now, mine didn't start because I looked in the mirror and was like, you're fat. Mine was a control thing, but it landed into I didn't want to gain weight. So it eventually turned from control into anorexia, um, which was a very challenging time. But I don't know if I would have the same relationship with myself if I didn't have that really poor time. Because I don't know if I would have been exposed to the power of the mind. Maybe, but I just don't know. So that's a little background about me and kind of where I've come from.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

I think you are one of the most inspirational people. I honestly, I relate a lot to your story because I did have a background which was disordered eating and I went down the whole route. But I it's really weird to say this. I almost I'm glad in a weird estate because it actually made me the person I am today. And I think that obviously, like you said, like these challenges that you've gone through have shaped you as the woman you are today. And the woman you are today is fucking incredible. Like it's inspiring to both myself and Tash. And I look at you and I see a woman that has got her shit together. Now we all go on a journey of life, and yet, well, probably some along the way. But right now, like the way you talk and articulate your story is fucking beautiful. It's phenomenal. And I hope that anyone listening to this, you know, takes something from that because that was just a beautiful piece of of your background, and we are blessed to have you here.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Thank you so much. Yeah, we've all got a we've all got a chapter in our story, right? We've all got life like a book. It's like, and I say this to clients, I'm like, this challenging moment is just a story you're gonna tell. Exactly. Of your book. And at some point you're gonna meet someone, and you're that's gonna be the story that you tell that inspires them to take action. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

It's a sentence, isn't it? It's not even a chapter. Like those little events sometimes can be huge in your book. I lost my dad three years ago, and you were talking about the control element. And it was, I went tunnel vision on training. I went so tunnel that it was unhealthy and then burnt myself out and it went down that end. But it's like that and then again shapes you in another way that you can then inspire someone else, and it becomes a couple of sentences or a chapter in your book. And you look back and and yeah, my life destruction, it was, it was awful. I was traumatized by losing him, and it was unexpected, and he was my best friend. And so when something to that size happens in your life, you can't see a way out. And now I look back, and obviously it's broken me as a person, and but it's also built me in a different way, you know. You come out sometimes, even in the darkest of places, you can come out the other side and you'll go, fuck me, I made that, I did that. I can fucking go and accomplish anything, you know.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

I think you just nailed that last page for swearing.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Um, but I do think I think it's so interesting that that you say, genuinely, if you could go back, like would you, would you change it? Like it was the darkest point in your life, but actually look at your life now and and we are shaped by all of our experiences. And I just think that like how many women that you help and you inspire, and like God knows how many people that you've you've helped overcome with your story and sharing your story and sharing that amazing piece, like it would come from such a tough place. But look what what you've done with it now. And I think, as you say, like the mindset is so powerful and genuinely like we can really we we are in control, like we're the only people that can bring ourselves out, and like you speaking about your story, I think gives other people their power to think, oh shit, like yeah, I can do this, like I can do something. Um, and what really stands out to both of us, and I think anyone that does follow you, is your mindset. Obviously, as you say, like you're you're known for your mindset, and um definitely I know you've like there's there's so many things that you've said that have resonated with me, and I've been like, oh my god, that's that's just like that's so true, like that's incredible. And what what comes across is that you obviously you have a mindset of a champion, you have the incredible discipline, you show up for yourself, you you do the work, but it's you also have a very soft and gentle approach to yourself, and that's what I think is really lovely because there's so many people are just like, you just gotta do the work, like just punish yourself, like come from like discipline is just like doing hard work, but we know that there is discipline is also self-compassion, and I think you have that approach a lot with your with your training and with your mindset. Like you show up, but also you know when it's okay to to be kind to yourself and you actually truly know what your body needs. And I I guess the question that we have on that is that something that you've had to practice, or is that something that you think has kind of come naturally to you?

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Oh no. I think about this often. And it is we often we learn compassion as we get older. I think it's a very common thing amongst high achievers is their ability to dress self-bullying up and call it discipline. And if you ladies maybe cast your mind back to when you first started training, maybe how you spoke to yourself, you might have used negative self-talk. Like negative self-talk is really powerful. And the reason it is so hard to shift and it becomes a default pattern is because it drives up so much adrenaline. You look in the mirror and you hate what you see, but that adrenaline that you create from that language, from that words, guess what? You go and do the thing. But it has a ceiling. You know, like negative self-talk has a ceiling. Pain is an amazing motivator, but it also has a ceiling because it's if everything's always pain, we use really sharp language with ourselves. And very little is it ever met with compassion. One of my favorite sayings is we want to practice having a high standard, but meet it with self-compassion. Because a high standard without that just becomes self-bullying. And like I said, many high-achieving women, and many just women in general, they will use the self-bullying and they'll look disciplined to the people outside of them. Look at her go, she's so disciplined. But inside, in her experience, it's probably not discipline. It's a rule, it's a chokehold. It's if I don't do this thing, then I'm not worthy. If I don't do this thing, then I don't earn this. If I don't do this thing, then I'm lazy. And the thing that I find so interesting is the women that I hear call themselves lazy are so far from that. Yet they put this expectation and they don't meet it. Or it's conditional. And those conditions are really unhealthy. And I think that's something that I teach a lot of clients is that loving ourselves and looking after ourselves, one shouldn't be conditional, but also can we learn to use different language? Because I often say that language is a weapon of love or destruction. But language is fucking powerful. And the way we use it is even more powerful. It is destructive or it is self-building. And this is why I often talk about like I I always say like dis discipline on its own, right? It we talk about it being the highest form of self-love. It is. It is doing the thing that you said you would do in the times that you don't feel like doing it. That is the discipline. Motivation is we do it when we feel like it. They're both really important. But for a lot of people, again, when they have dressed self-bullying up as discipline, when they hear the word discipline, it's like this really polarizing experience. It's I want to be disciplined, but the time I was disciplined, it was rigid, it was restrictive, and I actually didn't feel good. I still told myself I wasn't good enough. Because the intention about of of why they were using this thing called discipline, they were using it as a weapon of destruction, not a way to self-build. And so I often talk about like intention, like what's our intention? Why do we want to change? It's okay to come from pain. It's actually okay to look at yourself in the mirror and be like, I'm unhappy with what I see. But to own why the choices I made, and to say, well, how would I like to be? What would I like to practice? I'd like to like myself. Or what are the habits that you'd like to practice that are gonna say, I like me? Right? What is the self-care that you want to practice so that you can build this version of yourself that you look in the mirror and you go, I'm a work in progress, but I like me because I'm looking after myself now. I'm making those subtle changes.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

You talk about the words that you use and and how it shapes your mindset. You once, a couple of years ago, you you wrung something in my brain which was just phenomenal. You're doing a podcast and you said, don't use the word disciplined, use the word devoted, being so devoted to yourself. And it stuck with me. And I'm like, that's it. That's the key. That's the self-love aspect to going up to the gym, to showing up, to getting up, to putting good fuel in your body. It's because you're so devoted to loving yourself in a manner. It's not, it's not, all right, let's fucking go hard, let's discipline, let's wake up at 5 a.m. and hit the gym and go really, really intense. When you're there, yeah, maybe you're giving yourself that pet talk of let's fucking have it. But that softness is why, I don't know, there's something there that's resonates. And I don't know if it's a female aspect or or that sort of female trait that it's the we need the whole aspect, right? It's not just the whole masculinity of powering through all the time. That softness is is something, it's beautiful. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

I mean, yeah, the reason I love the word devotion is because it I think it meets discipline with compassion. Yeah, it's okay. When I think of I've when I think of love, most of us think, oh, love, it's so soft. It's this that is an element of love. But you know, okay, as an example, when I look at my partner, I'm like, I fucking love you. But that doesn't mean you don't challenge me. That doesn't mean I don't hold you to the standard that I know you're capable of. That doesn't mean that we don't have hard conversations. But I am devoted to you. I love you. I'm gonna be firm with you when I need to be, and I'm gonna be playful with you at other times. And that to me is what devotion is like. It's like, I'm gonna be firm with you when you need to be firm. I'm gonna hold you to that higher standard that I know you're worthy of because you set it and you know how to practice it. And discipline is gonna be in that because it's being devoted is doing doing it when you don't feel like it's like, no, no, no, we're gonna do it. And maybe we're remove the barrier to entry and lower the stakes and just start with this. I think that when we have devotion, that word, it's almost like the a tone comes with it. When people say discipline, like you said, it's like, let's lock in. And there's this kind of like like sharpness, like a bit more of an energy to it. And that's that is also whole whole and and women say that too. It's not a, you know, it's not a word only for men, but I think devotion is to it, it has this like very strong but feminine energy to it. And maybe that's why it resonates more with with women than maybe men, but I'm not too sure. But she hold she holds you to that standard, but she meets with compassion and she finds ways to help you enter into the thing that you said you were gonna do. And I feel like that's why, again, it feels like a very spiritual world word to me. It's like, I'm I'm devoted to you. Like, how how are we gonna work through this challenge together? Like, and we're human beings. We don't feel just one thing at one time. We feel many things at one time, and that's what's really polarizing because we can have fear and excitement in the room at the same time. We can be motivated by two different things. We can be motivated to be comfortable and we can be motivated to change. And I think that's the complexity of being a human, is like at some point we have to stop and we have to ask ourselves what is it that we truly want? If I do this action, where does that lead me? Is it the version of myself in an hour's time I'm gonna be really happy with? Or is it the version of myself I'm gonna say, fuck, I did that thing again?

SPEAKER_03 21:34

And I think devotion can say, Hey, what do we want to try? It's kind of like that whisper.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

It's like, I understand you're having a hard time. I understand you feel scared, but but what if we start here? That's my experience of it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

I knew that I'd sit here smiling at you the whole time. I'm like, I love it. We love your accent. Literally. I want to take it back a little bit in terms of training because obviously you look. Unreal, and we all know that, but you do look fucking insane. I can see your tails popping through. But in terms of the intensity, it's very clear that you bring a heavy level of intensity. And I think some people they don't always tap into that. You obviously train with a shitload of purpose and intend to push yourself when you do turn up to the gym, etc. Um, do you think that most people aren't quite training with the level of intensity they should be? Or what would you say to someone who maybe doesn't quite have that intensity there yet?

SPEAKER_03 22:32

It's a really good question.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

And training is a skill. Exercising is one thing. Exercising is you go and do the thing, and that's great. That's where we start. That's the entry point. But eventually you go, I want to get really good at this thing. I want to develop strength, I want to do complex movements, whatever it is. And so training is a skill that we practice. And the reason we repeat things over and over again is so that we can find the nuance between the good reps and the not so good reps. And the truth is, like, I think there's a misunderstanding around what men and women, it's not just women, understand is effective reps or is effective training. You know, we go into the gym, we see women like they're constantly looking at their timer or their watch going, I've burnt this amount of calories. I'm like, it actually doesn't matter. It's kind of irrelevant. When it comes to building muscle or changing our physique, unfortunately, the reps that do the signaling, they really hurt. And so a way in which we can lean into this discomfort is I often get to a point where I say, can I do one more? So if I have, let's say, eight to ten reps in my training block, I will say, okay, what's my minimum effective dose? Well, the minimum is eight. I'm gonna get to eight and ask myself, do I have one more? And I'll do one more. And I'm like, did that slow down? No. Was it hard? Yeah. But you know what? I've got one more. And I'm gonna say one more. And one of my favorite tools is to ask myself, can I do one more? And because so often when we think you've got to do five extra reps, you're that's too, that's too stressful. It feels too much. And what we want to learn to do is learn to do as many of those effective reps. And the effective reps are the reps that your muscle, like the movement involuntarily slows down. So so I don't know if you girls train to tempo or if anyone listen listening here trains to tempo. When you're doing a tempo, you know, repetition, which is essentially just controlling the movement, your first couple of reps, like they're pretty easy to control that movement. Unfortunately, those reps aren't really doing much. We have to start to enter in those reps that start to like challenge the speed in which we can contract the muscle. Now, unfortunately, those reps, they kind of hurt. But we need those reps. And I think maturing as an athlete, because I'm going to call us all athletes here, because we're all athletes in our own right, is learning how to lean into those, how to do more of those each set, each week. And not to be ruled by what the watch says or how much we're sweating, or, you know, whatever else we use as a marker of intensity. When we look at, like when we look at athletes and coaches, when we're referring to intensity, it's not how much you're sweating or your elevated heart rate. It is the amount of load that you are lifting for that set or rep. Okay, so what increases intensity, everyone, is the load that you're lifting. And so often people think complexity is better. So when I talk about complexity, they want drop sets, they want one-on-one quarters, they want all these extra protocols, which are not bad and they're not effective. But they're not that effective if you don't know how to lift load properly. So getting strong ladies is one of the best things we can do from a mental standpoint, from our capability, but also for the things of like building bone density, okay, and recruiting those high motor unit threshold muscle, uh, muscle fibers that are really good for building muscle, but they require heavy loads to do it. So I don't know if I even answered your question, but over there.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

I think that is obviously it comes, it comes over time as well. I think like if you show up. My background, my mom was a bodybuilder, and so I was in the gym from a baby. One arm she would be bicep curling, one arm she would be breastfeeding. It was that kind of relationship in the gym. Yeah. But she was very much multi-type. Give me a minute, just feeding the baby. But I was thrown into the gym situation very, very young. I think women haven't been thrown into that from a young age. You know, it's it's building, it's it's going to the gym, it's maybe doing the classes at first and go doing the exercising, so-called. And then sort of learning, like you said, it's a skill. You know, you can't go into the gym and just suddenly lift a squat 100 kg when you're brand new to it. It is the intensity of your body and where you are currently at. And I think I think women sometimes can underestimate their strength. I really do. Like they think that it's pink dumbbell vibes. Wim women are the hardest workers in the room.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Going to any gym. Okay. They are the hardest workers in the gym. We are so resilient and just we we care so much about how we look, right? And and that's really positive in the way of like, well, we're gonna do the things that help look after us. And I think um, for some reason I thought about this as you were sharing that, Emily. Like one of the missing pieces that I think a lot of women robs them from having really great sessions or learning what they're true or even tapping into their true strength, is that they don't know the importance of warm-ups.

SPEAKER_04 27:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Like it's a game changer. And so many women, they'll just go straight into the gym, go straight to the exercise, do the reps, and then they have this like really kind of skewed progression model because one one week they're strong and one week they're not. And so using warm-ups, which I call the rehearsal to the movement, like if you're a performer and you're, you know, per um doing your rehearsals, you're not just kind of like going in and rehearsing it. Like you're rehearsing it the way that you want to perform to the audience. That is also your warmups. And look, personally, I I do warm-ups for like every single exercise that I that I lift, but that's because the intent, like, I can't go straight. I will not get the result I want if I go straight. But learning how to warm up effectively, and it's not, I guess I'm a really easy model for anyone listening here who doesn't warm up very well, is take 50% of the weight that you think you're gonna lift for your work sets or what you have been working using for your work sets, use 50% of the reps that you're gonna use. So an example would be, let's say you've got 10, 10 reps and you're gonna use 100 kilos. Your first warm-up set, you're gonna do 50 kilos for five reps. Then you might increase the load by 25%, you do 75 reps for like three or four reps. And then you might do one more set to 90 kilos and you do one or two reps. And then your next warm-up, your next set is your working set at 100. The the thing about warming up that way is not only are we rehearsing the movement for the body, but you are what's called neurally arousing the nervous system. You are helping the body organize the joints and muscle fibers to fire more effectively to produce more force. And when I say produce more force, that is more load on the body to then be lifted. That's a big tick. That's what we need for strength and hypertrophy. So if anyone here is listening and you're like, you don't warm up, use that model. And I want to know: did you have access to more strength? Did the exercise feel easier? Did you feel more confident performing the exercise? Right? Because it does so many great things. It's one of the missing pieces, one of the things that lets so many people down is not warming up. And that's gonna allow you to get more effective reps because you're gonna build confidence in how you do it, and then you're gonna be like, oh shit, I've got more in me. And then you're either gonna increase the load or you're gonna try and get more and more reps till the bar really slows down and you're gonna try and do as many slow reps as you can before you go, okay, that was a good set.

SPEAKER_03 30:30

Yeah, I really like that.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

And I do think people don't utilize warm-ups as much as they should. And I think even as you say, just from sort of like the confidence standpoint, warming up, you think, actually, yeah, I can do that. Because I even find sometimes with myself, I'm like, I doubt my own strength a lot and I'm still learning. And it does, it gives you that confidence. You're like, oh, actually, like this working weight kind of felt like a warm-up weight. I probably could do more. And it gives you that confidence to add more. And I think, as you said, like thinking about it just one rep at a time, because sometimes I find myself or with clients, if we just think I have to do eight to ten reps at this really heavy weight, you almost feel like you can't do it. Like your mind is going to stop you before your body does. But actually just thinking, okay, let me just try and do one and then see if I can do one more. And and breaking it down that way is so much more effective for building strength and building muscle. It's kind of like with just nutrition or just building your body in general. It's like we can't look at the massive, overarching end goal. We have to break it down into these small, tangible steps that we that we find achievable, like right in the moment. Because otherwise, our minds gonna be like, that's too much. We just can't do it. It's not gonna happen. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

And it just reminds me of like, again, going back to lower the barrier for entry. One of my favorite sayings, how do you eat an elephant? One mouthful at a time, right? An elephant is a freaking big goal to go eat, right? And just like, well, where do I start? We start with one mouthful. How do we lose 10 kilos, one kilo at a time? How do we accomplish 10 reps, one rep at a time? If we think of, as you said, the overarching goal, the end thing, and we're just starting, that is very overwhelming. So overwhelming that people just don't even start. And that's the piece that robs people from even getting some idea of what their potential capacity is. And as you said, it's like we we rob ourselves from the stories we tell, which are just an imagination of how we think it's gonna be. Instead of going, okay, I recognize I'm telling my story, but if I start here, at least I'm starting.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Tess, you've been to Watch Hattie compete, haven't you?

SPEAKER_00 32:50

Yes, when you competed in London 2022. No, I think it was 2022. Yeah, where you wore the gold the gold bikini. 2022 when I go won the gold bikini.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Not when I lost the title. Or was it something else?

SPEAKER_00 33:07

No, no, no, no. It was um it must have been it must have been 2022 because then I competed in 2023. So um, yeah, you no, you won. Obviously. Of course you won.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

You knew! Well, you've obviously got a fucking shitload of experience competing. And I I watch, I like going back to obviously like my mom and and the person that she's become from when she did compete. And I think watching her, I've not competed, and I don't know if that will ever be my thing, but I watch, I've watched her and obviously like watching you, it obviously teaches you things that go far beyond that physical side. It obviously tests you mentally and emotionally as well. Do you think it's taught you anything about yourself or not just as an athlete, but just as a person in general, like navigating challenges through life?

SPEAKER_02 34:04

Oh, I mean, yes. Bodybuilding in general for me has taught me so much. Like it was the first place that I realized it is okay to fail. And even, you know, like as an example, like actually one of one of the biggest, I guess, lessons that I learned as well from bodybuilding was losing the world title. Like was going, oh shit, I still have a little bit of self-bullying going on. Oh shit, I'm I'm outsourcing my worth to the stage. That was a really big moment. And it was like, oh, okay, something needs to be improved here. And so what's interesting is like now I like I'm like, I'm a champion. I'm not just a champion because someone gave me that title. I'm a champion because how I show up every day. Like I am who I say I am. I don't have imposter syndrome. It's I will do the hard things and I will navigate the challenges. And yes, competing, competing, what I love about competing is from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, every single, every single thing you do in that day has purpose. It is so purposeful. And I I feel like I've got a very healthy relationship with my whole experience of competing, but it can also be the opposite. But the reason that it's healthy is because I am so, I guess I'm so embodied in what I'm doing. And I'm not searching for something else. I'm like, no, I'm showing up. I'm pushing myself. I'm I am who I say I am. I'm finding joy in the challenge. I am trying to see what I'm like, there's a part of me that goes, all right, what are we gonna do? Like there's this, I rub my hands together and it's like, let's go do something crazy. And it's really exciting. And I get to do all that before I even get to the stage. And the stage is my least favorite part because it means it's ended. Oh shit, we gotta, but I really love it, but you can't do it forever, right? There's no way I wouldn't love it if I could do it forever, but I love it for the time that I do it. And it's just, it's made me just be so amazed at how incredible the human body is. Like I really look at this vessel and I'm like, we've done some really cool shit together. Like, I really didn't treat you well before. And I think that's a really beautiful perspective that we can all have. It's like this vessel, which is actually amazing. We can train it to do anything, but it comes from here. Train the mind, train the body. The body just does what the mind tells it to do. It will stop at the reps that your mind says don't do anymore. Right. And then also what we tell ourselves is what we see in the mirror. We don't see ourselves as we are, we see ourselves as we feel. Which is why it's super important to be practicing the habits that when you identify them, you're going, that's an identity I want to have. I want that habit to be a part of my identity. And when I don't do it on that day, I go, oh shit, I didn't do that thing, versus I have to do that thing. And so bodybuilding can be this beautiful thing because I'm like, even without the stage, it's like it's such a privilege to build your body. Like you're literally working so hard, you are forcing it to change. You're forcing it to get stronger. You're forcing it to get fitter. You're literally choosing the foods that are going to rebuild the cells. Like when I I think of it like that, which probably seems really weird, but that's when it becomes so internal. It's such an intrinsic motivator, not just what I'm seeing in the mirror. Because what you see in the mirror, ladies, like, again, you don't always see yourselves as you are, but you're picking your, you're you're getting what you look for, right? So if you're looking for progress, you'll see it. But if you're looking to pull yourself apart, you'll see that too. Um and it, and it creates, it makes you practice patience, perseverance, but also how to follow a progress, a process, which I think is really, really empowering too. So I'm the most organized person in my life in bodybuilding. And I often ask myself, how can I, how can I take that into other areas? Like I'm fiercely consistent in bodybuilding. And I'm like, okay, how can I take things like the skills that I have here and apply it to other areas of my life? So I am that consistency and I am, you know, that driven, or I am that disciplined. So it's a really, it's a really powerful, it's an interesting sport because it's the only sport that you are asking your body to outperform itself while strategically starving it. Like what a bizarre, what a backward sport.

unknown 38:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

But it's crazy. Also shows you how freaking resilient and anti-fragile you are.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I only competed in 2023. I've only done one prep. I would, it's my dream to go back and do more because I absolutely loved it. Are you gonna compete again? I would love to, but my I just my my it's it takes a lot out of my body. I lost my cycle for a long time post-prep, and babies are on on the on the cards for my more near future. So that is what's more important to me at the moment. Um, but one day it I'll I'll go back to it. I want to be like maybe late 30s, early 40s. I'll be like the mum that comes back and shows that you can do whatever you can, whatever you want to do. Um, but yeah, it taught it it teaches you that you really like you can do anything like you set your mind to, and you have to be so organized. And I genuinely like love that discipline, and I still carry that in life today, but almost to the point where maybe I've gone a little bit too far, and it brings you kind of back to like the discipline devotion equation. Sometimes I think we just do things because we think we have to, and it almost becomes a habit, and actually like pulling myself away from that and thinking, okay, yeah, there is discipline, but also how can I like actually listen to my body a little bit more and like because obviously when you're when you're bodybuilding, when you're prepping, it's less so about what your body really needs, and you just have to follow the plan to get to the stage. Whereas when you're not prepping, but you still want to live this lifestyle, you have to encompass a little bit more of yeah, I want to, I want to build the body and I want to live this certain way, but also what do I, what does my body really need? And where do I maybe like need to slow down and have more self-awareness around what's actually serving me? And that is something that I am now like trying to navigate, obviously being in a very different place of trying to make my body the most fertile it can be, which oftentimes comes with more food and and slowing down, which is which is new to me. But um, yeah, I think elements of prep are just something that I will I will carry on forever because it's just yeah, it was it was amazing. I loved it.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

I think bodybuilding can teach us, it teaches like general population like a lot in the way of like bodybuilders are the best at what they do, they know how to build your body, but they also know how to fuel it for performance in the off seasons. Like, you know, I often say that tupleware isn't only for bodybuilders, but you also don't have to live your whole life out of a tupleware. But if you're here that if you're someone that's trying to improve how you eat, then, you know, prepping your food is a really like it saves you so many calories, but also gives you so much like autonomy around the food that you want to eat and you realize you can eat so much more than what you think you can. Also, you know, the things of like progressive overload and tracking, not just tracking your nutrition, tracking your progress in the gym, tracking your metrics, not just looking at what you see in the mirror. And the like there's so many things that I think you don't have to get on stage to to bodybuild. Shit. And even now that I'm no longer competing, I'm like, when people ask me, like, what's changed? I'm like, nothing. I'm I'm still gonna build my body. I'm not satisfied. I've still got things I want to do. I love training. I track my nutrition. I'm for me, it's just this is how I look after myself. It's so ingrained. And I have so many, so much skill around it, and I'm so consistent that I can't, I know where and when I can be flexible. Um, and I think that you have to almost you have to learn that rigidity before you learn flexibility. And I think so many people, when they go and want to change their bodies, there's this resistance to wanting to track food or do any of those things. So they see it as obsessive. And it's like it's only obsessive if you make it obsessive. Otherwise, you can make it just a process that you follow and you measure yourself the same way you measure your training at the gym. The same way you measure yourself when you're looking at like your career or how you're organizing your day. And so you do that just for a period of time. So you develop a level of skill. Most people, I think, fall apart, is like they're putting in all this effort, but it's effort without it being managed that makes sense. So it's like they're putting in all the same effort because they've made big changes to their nutrition and their mindset, their habits, but it's not measured. What doesn't get measured doesn't get managed. They just know the effort they're putting in and they're not seeing the result. But if they went all in on a process that we all know works, it's like foolproof, they will actually get the reward will match the effort. And that's worth doing. And you don't have to do it forever. I do it forever because I enjoy doing it. It's like brushing my teeth. It's just so robotic. But in the beginning, everything requires effort. But that's I don't know why I just shared that, but it reminds me of like when people talk about it's obsessive. And I'm like, that can be your experience, but it doesn't have to be. Like it can be just a process that you measure, and then as soon as you do it, you get out of it. It's only obsessive when you're constantly thinking about food you're gonna eat. Put your food in, put the app away, eat the food, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Yeah. I love that. I love you you're saying there as well, that you have to go all in. And this is something that I think when 'cause Emily and I work a lot with general population that just want to lose weight and feel feel their best. And something that I I do see as a pattern, especially at the beginning, is that people just don't like, they don't go all in. They don't want to give it everything. They don't have that level of commitment from the get-go. And that's definitely a skill that we learn over time. But it's always something that we really want to push, like, be committed, like go all in for this goal because that's what you want and that's how you're gonna get to where you want to be. But I almost think, again, it probably comes back to the mindset people not a hundred percent certain, like they don't back themselves, they don't believe themselves. And so they don't go all in because they think, what if I go all in and I don't get the result that I want? So they kind of hold themselves back.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Yeah, but they end up not getting the result they want because they haven't gone all in. So it's that like that's that's the problem. And commitment is such a beautiful thing. Commitment is almost like devoted, devotion. I'm gonna commit to this process. And if I commit to this process, I get to learn from it. I'm not just relying on it. I'm not saying trust the process when I'm really not. I'm staying committed to it. And everything that we learn in the beginning is hard. And so the thing about commitment is it really helps you understand like what's your why? Like why why do you want to change? Okay, right. So if the if the fear of failing is really high, what are the things you do need to do to not fail? Go back to the process. You want to be mapped to man measure it and manage it. Because if we don't do that, then we're gonna get emotional. And emotions are not useful, especially when it comes to these types of things. And it's also okay to fear failure. Like I think sometimes with clients, it's like just going, I understand that. Like I I understand why that feels really heavy. But the thing I've always wrapped it up is with is the fact that you want to try again means that that was just another rep. And this is gonna be another rep. And what is the greatest thing about doing reps consistently is they give us nuance to the poor reps. And they also help us master ourselves. So on the reps that we do that aren't very good, we can look at and go like, what wasn't good about that rep? And so often it's the organization, it's the lack of organization. And that's a skill I think that gets missed a lot, especially when all this is like we focus on, okay, tracking your macros, like, cool, but what about the preparation phase? And tracking your macros, again, just like training, it's a skill. It's a skill. A habit is one thing you do, a skill is multiple things you do. And so that's why when we have this imagination of I'm just gonna track my nutrition and everything's gonna change, we don't meet that expectation. We're like, oh shit, this is so much harder than what I thought. Am I capable?

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Speaking of obviously being a beginner, not beginner, but beginner at something, something we loved seeing from you lately is this transition, obviously, to public speaking. I guess stepping into maybe a bit more of the unknown. Um essentially being, I guess, a beginner of something again, even though that you're incredible at speaking regardless. But I think it's such a powerful position to put yourself in because I guess it forces you, it forces growth in a very different way. What has that experience been like for you so far in this journey?

SPEAKER_03 47:29

Great question.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

I mean, what I notice is that what I notice is that I have an unfair or unrealistic unrealistic expectation of myself. I have this expectation that I should be better than what I am. And it kind of reminds me of like, I'm a blue belt trying to be a black belt. I know where I want to go. I can see myself being there, but I haven't done the reps. The math ain't mathing. I haven't done the reps. But the thing about being a beginner and what what my story that I told myself to start was done is better than perfect. Yeah. Again, I remove or lower the barrier to entry, which was just get it done. And I said, I will be committed to this thing. I'm gonna be committed. I will show up when I don't feel like it, when I'm unorganized, when I'm feeling uncertain and telling myself, I'm not good enough. I have all those things. I barely feel ready. I think this feeling of ready, it's not always there. But it's learning how to do the thing even when that voice is there. And that's what I've been practicing. But now that I've done a couple of more episodes and I've and I've had a couple of practices, I'm I recognize that this expectation that I have is it's higher. And now I have a standard of myself, which is well, you need to practice this, and this is how we're gonna practice. And I know if I mess up, I'll be upset with myself when I haven't met my standard. So it's a very interesting space for me to be in because I very much feel like, as you said, a beginner, and I'm still learning. I still have so many reps to do. And I laugh because I'm like, I only know how to be good at like bodybuilding. I spent most of my time doing that. It's so interesting to be a beginner again. And it's really interesting to notice the language that I use. And it was really interesting to be like, oh, I'm doing that thing where I'm giving myself an expectation and not focusing on standard. And when I talk about expectation versus standard, expectation in my eyes is an imagination we create about ourselves. And I said, I should be here. You've done this before, you should be there. I had this expectation that I should be better than what I am. And I can beat myself with that. And I actually I recorded a couple of podcasts the other week and I just felt like I couldn't nail it. I had to ask myself, am I self-bullying or am I holding myself to the standard I know I'm worthy of? And I was like, I'm holding myself to the standard I know I'm worthy of. I know I can do better. So it's a really um, it's a both a beautiful, it's a comp, it's a mix of uh beautiful frustration, learning, failing forward, all of those things. And I know a friend of mine, Eugene, he's got a massive, massive audience. He's got like a million followers on YouTube and really great speaker. And he said to me, Hattie, if you apply the same effort that you put into being a world champion into your podcasting and public speaking, he's like, you cannot fail. And I loved that perspective. It he literally said it to me on my own podcast, and I was like, shit, because I was going, I don't know if I'm good enough. He's like, no, no, no, that's not, that's not the story that you tell. The perspective that you lean into is I know how to be a world champion. What do I learn from being a world champion that I can apply here? Because I did that for 20 years or for 15 years. And again, it's that I want to be here, but I have to recognize that I'm here. And I think we do that to ourselves in so many different ways, whether it's the expectation of how we think our body's gonna be in 12 weeks' time or 12 months' time, how we think the muscle is gonna grow when it doesn't meet because muscle is so slow. And we see people on the internet that are, you know, fast-track their result. And we're like, why am I not? Like, am I doing something wrong? It's like, no, we just meet some more reps and we need some more years and we need some more practice. And, you know, seeing the some things we spoke about today, which is that training intensity, the warm-ups, the tracking of nutrition, manage and measure things. They're all things that most of us could do better, which will accelerate our result. But most of us still have an unfair expectation of ourselves of where we think we should be. So I had to remind myself of like, well, I understand that I have this expectation here, but what is the standard that I can practice, which is something that is very tangible. So I love practicing standards and just trying to remove expectation, because expectation is just an imagination and something I'm not gonna meet just yet. I haven't done the reps.

SPEAKER_00 52:03

I think that's so that's really interesting as well, in terms of sort of how obviously you have such a high standard for yourself because you have been like you're you're a world champion in bodybuilding. You've been doing it for 15 years, and we kind of that becomes your baseline of what you think should be for everything else in life. And I think we probably see this a lot with clients as well, who maybe are super successful in their careers, in their family life, or whatever it is that is like there, a thing that they are like amazing at. And they just expect that same thing from when it comes to building their body, nailing their nutrition, nailing their training. And of course, as you say, like we can't we can't have those unrealistic expectations. It's it's completely different. We need to be okay with actually this is a thing that I need to come in from the ground and like it's okay to be a beginner and work our way through from the blue belt all the way to the black belt, but we can't go straight from from blue to black.

SPEAKER_02 53:04

So yeah, they're just um yeah, I guess my experience kind of reminds me of, you know, a client like doesn't want to get on scale because they don't want to see the result, or um, you know, I there's a part of me that's so resistant to listening back to my podcast or watching me speak because I'm like, I just I notice I'm just too critical. And it reminds me of people that, you know, I want to avoid their photos. And you're like, no, no, no, this is just a part of your journey. I have to set it to myself. You know, when we look at our training, when our we look at our training videos, we look at like what's what are we doing well, what are we breaking down? So that is the process in which I am, I notice that I'm really resistant to what I'm practicing. Because it's, you know, it's just like it, it's just like everything else. No one likes to, I don't mind being a beginner, just not for too long.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

It's the the high achiever mindset, which I feel like we all we all know too well. We just like we just want to be the best at everything. This has honestly been incredible. I feel like we've covered so much ground. And as Emily said, we've just been here smiling like Cheshire cats the whole thing listening to you speak. Um, we would love to move into a little bit of a quick fire round now. Um so, Emily, do you want to kick it off with the first question?

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Yes. So, a little bit faster. What is one piece of advice that you have received at some point in your journey that has genuinely changed the way you live your life and the way you approach things? That is such a big question. Maybe not quick file.

SPEAKER_02 54:43

But something I often think about is life is a series of less lessons and experiences. And the reason I share that is because so often we can make things mean so many things. Like again, the failure. It's like, no, it's just a lesson. It's just a lesson and an experience. And we want to collect as many lessons and experiences as we can in life. So when I when I think about that, it kind of removes a lot of this, like again, that high expectation or that barrier lowers the barrier to entry to just try, to just do the thing. And then the last piece, which is something Alex Ramosy always says, and it is at the end, we're all gonna die. Okay. And the reason I love that piece, again, is like at the end, we're all gonna end up in the same place. We're essentially all working us each other home. We all end up at the same place. Don't or try not to let the judgment of others or the fear of failing rob you of living the fullest life that you can. If I and I remember sort of saying this to myself when I was 28, I said, if I died tomorrow, would I be happy with my life? And at 28, I was like, Yeah, I could be. I've done so many great things. And now being at 37, I'm like, would I be happy if I died tomorrow? I'm like, well, no, because I just got married. But I I could honestly say I've lived a really good life. But there's still so much more to be done. And there's still times where I've, you know, let myself, I've held back. But reminding yourself, we're all walking each other home. At the end, we all die. Life is a lessons of series of lesson, lessons, and experiences. What do we want to create?

SPEAKER_01 56:26

Okay, we're all gonna die, so you might as well do it anyway. Love that.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

Um, and you obviously have such an incredible way with words and the language you use, and you've shared so many things today that I know it's just like this is gonna stick with people and make them think. Um, what would you say is personally like your favorite quote or belief that you use when you're trying to strengthen your relationship with yourself?

SPEAKER_03 56:55

Well, there's two things.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

I mean, one of my favorites is we're built to do hard things, but not on our own. I find myself saying that a lot. And the other is um, I guess that high standard was self-compassion. Reminding myself of that all the time when I feel like I'm failing or I'm scared to fail, or I notice that my language gets a bit sharp. But the we are built to do hard things really resonates with me because I think sometimes we think we're fragile and we can have fragile moments, we're human beings, but this vessel, this mind, like we are we're so fucking capable. Like we are so capable. It's training our mind to believe that and then practicing the things that give us evidence that we are capable, and we don't start with the black belt, we start with the blue, right? So that's all the barriers to entry and start the practice.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

Hassy, fucking hell. This has been one amazing, incredible conversation. I feel like there is so much in this conversation that people are gonna take away from, because honestly, you have blown me away. Like we said, we have just sat here nodding with appreciation for everything that you've just said. And I wanted to wrap it up with saying what's one piece of advice you give people, but I feel like everything you've said has been that one piece of advice. So I just want to thank you so much from the bottom of my heart because your perspective, your experiences have definitely shaped a lot of our journeys. I I know for me and Tash, you have without fail shaped our own journey. And I'm so grateful to have you on this episode. So before we wrap up, can you just quickly run through where everyone can find you, follow your journey, connect with you social media-wise?

SPEAKER_02 58:40

My main, I guess where you can find me is Hattie Boydle on Instagram. And I do my best to message everyone. So feel free to shoot me a message, ask me a question, love to hear from you. Um, I do have the Hattie Boydle podcast.

SPEAKER_01 58:52

Amazing. Thank you. Honestly, I've just I'm blown away.

SPEAKER_00 58:56

I'm blown away. This has been incredible. Like, absolutely loved it. As I said, so many, so many things. I think not even that will be light bulb moments for people, but things that really make them think and think about their relationship with themselves and honestly help them transform their body. So yeah, we we could not be more grateful to have you on. Thank you so much. Girls thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 59:20

Thank you guys. Thank you for listening, and hopefully, we will see you again on our next episode.