The ROCKSTAR Mom
THRIVE at work and home, discover why balance is actually bullsh*t and get your schedule under control so you have more time and energy to do the things you love - without the mom guilt.
This podcast is for the successful, ambitious mom who “has it all together” on the outside but secretly craves more clarity, peace of mind, energy and joy.
Each week, Wellness & Empowerment Coach Megan Caldwell shares tip on simple healthy habits, nervous system tools, mindset shifts and ways to connect with both yourself and others to help you DITCH perfectionism and exhaustion, learn how to break the constant cycle of overwhelm, reconnect to what is MOST important to you, and have more ENERGY and PEACE OF MIND so you can feel more fulfilled, even when life feels way too busy.
Through practical strategies and real-life conversations with experts, you’ll discover how to stop surviving on autopilot and start THRIVING in every area of your life with more ease.
It’s time to RECLAIM your energy, RECONNECT with your priorities, and have a lot more FUN, so you can be the fulfilled, ROCKSTAR woman you want to be.
Don't want to miss a beat?
➡️Sign up for our email list (no spam! only goodness!) at www.megancaldwelllpdx.com/newsletter
➡️Connect with us further on Instagram at @megancaldwellpdx
➡️Download a free 5-minute Guided Release & Reset Meditation (which you will thank yourself for!) at www.megancaldwellpdx.com/R&Rmeditation
➡️AND Please subscribe to the podcast now to join our ROCKSTAR community and begin your journey towards living a life with more clarity, energy, peace of mind and FUN!
The ROCKSTAR Mom
Ditch the Quick Fixes: Build Lasting Fitness Habits with Megan Dahlman
Ready to stop white-knuckling your workouts and start building strength that actually fits your life? We sit down with trainer Megan Dahlman to rethink fitness for midlife women who want results without burnout.
Instead of chasing another challenge or punishing routine, we focus on the moves and mindsets that last:
- walking as a powerful baseline
- bodyweight strength for safe foundation
- and a practical path to lifting that supports hormones, joints, and long-term energy.
Megan shares how she went from training pro athletes to helping women 40, 50, and 60+ feel strong, pain-free, and confident. The shift is simple and profound: capability doesn’t always equal capacity.
You might be able to do a 60-minute boot camp, but do you have the time, recovery, and stress bandwidth TODAY?
When you match the plan to your real capacity, consistency skyrockets. That’s where the “dial” comes in—on hard days you choose a five to ten-minute walk or a short core set; on better days you dial up to a focused strength session. No more on/off cycle, just steady momentum.
You’ll learn why walking is seriously underrated and why strength training is the number one lever for longevity in perimenopause and menopause.
If you’re craving a routine that survives low-motivation days and actually feels good to keep, this conversation gives you the blueprint. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs sustainable strength, and leave a quick review—then tell us: what’s the first small step you’ll take today?
**This interview was pre-recorded as part of The ROCKSTAR Mom Virtual Event, Season 1 in March 2025**
Learn more about Megan Dahlman at:
https://www.vigeofit.com/
https://www.instagram.com/megandahlman/
We’d love to hear your feedback! Send us a text
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Don't want to miss a beat?
➡️Sign up for our email list (no spam! only goodness!) at www.megancaldwelllpdx.com/newsletter
➡️Connect with us further on Instagram at @megancaldwellpdx
➡️Download a free 5-minute Guided Release & Reset Meditation (which you will thank yourself for!) at https://www.subscribepage.com/rrmeditation
➡️AND Please subscribe to the podcast now to join our ROCKSTAR community and begin your journey towards living a life with more clarity, energy, peace of mind and FUN!
You are listening to the Rockstar Mom, a podcast for high achievers who are ready to get off of autopilot and live a life with more intention, peace of mind, and happiness. This is a space to expand, dig deep, get clear, and take action towards living your most authentic, aligned life. I'm Megan Caldwell. As a mom of three, two-time burnout survivor, and empowerment coach and speaker, I've cracked the code on what it actually takes to thrive at work and home, ditch perfectionism and people pleasing, get your schedule under control, and live with more ease. So you've got more time and energy to do the things you love without the mom guilt. It's time to get out of your head and into action. Now is the time to live your most rockstar life. Let's go. Hi, friend. Do I have quite a treat for you today? I am sharing an interview that I had with the amazing Megan Dahlman as part of the Rockstar Mom Virtual Event season one earlier this year. And this interview was on fire. I am so grateful that Megan took the time to be with us, as she is an expert and a guru in the space of fitness, in the space of nutrition for women, kind of in the mid-season of life and beyond. And she is all about sustainability over quick fixes. So we talk a little bit about that. We also talk about kind of motivation and how we can play into motivation or lack of motivation. This whole concept you'll hear me say time and again about starting small and then building momentum and what that actually looks like when it comes to being an active individual. And one of my favorite takeaways from this interview was this whole concept of capability versus capacity. Again, this is a conversation that you don't want to miss. I'm so glad that you're here for it. Enjoy. Get to it. I am so very excited to introduce Megan Dahlman to the Rockstar mom today. In her 17 years of professional training, Megan Dahlman has become the sought-after trainer for women over 40 who want to be strong and live a long, energetic life. Leveraging a degree in exercise science and certification as a strength and conditioning specialist, she has an uncanny ability to make fitness and nutrition simple, doable, and most importantly sustainable. Through her top-ranked podcast, Self-Care Simplified, and online training programs and courses, it's her mission to help women in midlife and beyond feel strong, pain-free, and confident in all aspects of their body. Megan, welcome to The Rockstar Mom. It is such a pleasure to have you here today. I cannot wait to see all that you are going to share with our listeners.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you for having me, Megan. I think this is going to be the Megan show today. I was just thinking before we hopped on, I have another meeting later today with another Megan. I'm like, I think that there were a lot of Megan's right around the same year. So I think so.
SPEAKER_00:Megan Squared, the Megan show. Let's get to it. I love that so much. It's a good name straight out of the 80s, right? It is. It is. Awesome, awesome. Well, I'd love before we dive into kind of really your niche and what you are so, so just talented at and your magic and gifts in this world when it comes to fitness and nutrition. Before we dive in, I would love for you to share how did you get to where you're at and why do you do the work that you do? Why do you really specialize in our listeners here, women, moms who are in their mid-40s, 50s, who are wanting to take care of their bodies better? What brought you here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, such such a good question. And like most of us, it's this long circuitous route that never starts out the way you thought it would. It starts out a certain way, and you end up in a totally different, different place that you pictured. And when I began my career as in the fitness industry, I came through college, got my degree in exercise science. And then straight out of college, I wanted to work with high-level athletes. And I did. I worked as an athletic performance specialist, and my dream was to be a trainer for like Olympic level athletes. And I did have the opportunity to train quite a few professional athletes, and that was so just so much energy there. And it felt pretty like important for some reason, like popular. Like those are the popular, popular people you want to work with.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, right. Everybody's dream, train the train the professional athletes.
SPEAKER_01:Train the professional athletes, train the Olympians. You know, I never personally had the athletic skills to be like a professional athlete or an Olympian, but gosh, if I could be part of their process, that'd be so cool. And I was definitely interested in fitness myself. I always was athletic, albeit mediocre, but I really enjoyed athletics and sports. And so as I started training these athletes, I was I found myself in a situation where I was training athletes of all different levels and different ages too. And a lot of those athletes were middle school athletes and high school athletes. And the moms of those athletes were in the wings, watching, you know, driving their kids like we all are doing now, being the taxi driver. And those moms would come up to me at the end of our sessions and be like, can I work with you? Because what I see you doing, like all of the athletic performance development, the functional style strength training, the mobility work, the plyometrics, like the agility work. That looks way more science-based, way more like fun than some of my like, I don't know, Zoom classes that I've been doing that I haven't really felt like I've been getting results. So that led to me starting to train some of these moms. And right around that point, I started my own personal training company. And just over time, it shifted towards me training primarily moms around my age. And then my style of training really started to resonate with older women in particular, because I'm very strategic. I'm a stickler for technique. I have, I really try to take a big picture mindset with our health. Like, we're not going to zoom in on one thing. We're going to make sure like you are healthy holistically and not be so aesthetically driven with our fitness, be more long, longevity driven and big picture mindset. And boy, that really resonated with women over 40. And so going from training, you know, Olympic level athletes to now I primarily train women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, it's just really funny how things end up. And I love it. I love it. And it the results that a woman who's 50 years old can feel in her body is every bit of a victory as an Olympic standing on the podium, you know?
SPEAKER_00:I love that so much. And I think uh first, thank you for sharing a bit of your story. And I think it's just a great reminder to all of our listeners that we're each on our own journey and we're each still continuing to write our own story. And it is never too late. And I love that you have made fitness and movement and daily habits really accessible to those who have been stuck in patterns for years and years that really haven't served them or have gone through pregnancy and childbirth. And now they're in a body that does not feel like their own. And yeah, having been in the fitness space prior myself, it's it's not rocket science, but it's like you need the lead and you need somebody to break it down so it can become part of who you are and truly a sustainable piece of your lifestyle. I love how you share it. It's about lifestyle and longevity, not about quote unquote getting your body back after having a baby.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I think that's kind of our experience with fitness so much. It's like we have a very like short-term mindset, and there's a lot of, you know, fitness challenges out there that are just a couple of weeks long or and there's no plan for longevity. There's no, what is this going to look like a year from now? Is this something that you're gonna be able to do 10 years from now? And I think that for us women, as we're getting older, we're getting wiser and hopefully we're getting away from the quick fix world. But who's there to meet us? When we decide I don't want to do the extreme things anymore. I don't, I've wrecked my body with that. I don't want to do a quick fix. I want something that does last for a good amount of time. But what do I do? Who is there to help me do that? I don't know what to do because all I know is to go all in, to do something extreme. That's the only thing I have experienced doing.
SPEAKER_00:And especially thinking about those listeners out there today. We see you, we are you, we were you, we have moved through again, high achievers who we get so caught up in that all or nothing mindset. I must go harder, go home. I must climb the ranks in my career. That it is, it is about the habits and the actual movements that you're doing, but it's also about the mindset behind it. I'm curious if you can share a little bit about, and again, I think you alluded to it. Like part of it is our conditioning and our culture and our society that we have been groomed and conditioned to want that quick fix for whatever it is that we want, whether it's body composition or something else. But talk to me a little bit about why is it so hard for women to stick to fitness routines, even if we know what we quote unquote should be doing, even when we get to the point where we know it doesn't have to be balls to the wall and sweaty. Why is it so hard? And how do we move through this and overcome?
SPEAKER_01:Well, for most of us, for the majority of women, it's hard because it's not enjoyable. It's usually just a means to an end. It's like it, it's always in this category of this is something I should do. I know what I should be doing, but I just I don't enjoy the process. I enjoy the way I feel after. But especially when we're really busy, we're always going to gravitate towards something that feels really good. Something that we know is going to not be a miserable process. And so that's part of the reason. I think another reason why we have trouble like just sticking with routine or or just we love going so hard and like all in at first, is because we really do get like a dopamine hit from that. We feel powerful when we do something really hard, really extreme. We've all experienced like an hour-long workout that pushed us to the edge where we're dripping on the floor, shaking, and feeling like I can't believe I just did that. Felt like I climbed Mount Everest. That felt amazing. Right. And so we feel like every time we work out, we need to have that same like mountaintop experience. You know, like who cares how that, you know, that was miserable, but also like that was incredible. I felt like I overcame so much. So it's always got to be this really big, grandiose thing. And so there's a couple of reasons there, like why we just, gosh, if if I can't have this big, huge mountaintop experience with each and every one of my workouts that are like gonna push me to the edge and I'm gonna walk away feeling like I accomplished the world. And also I know that that doesn't feel good and it's miserable and it hurts. I I'm just gonna gravitate away from it. And you get to the point where you're a few months asked your all those good intentions, and you realize, like, I really have no fitness routine in place in my life. You know, I've got a lot of good intentions in place, but I have no actual routine. It's not a part of my normal daily life, the way that taking a shower is or brushing my teeth every day, or getting my kids to school, or showing up for work, like those things are integrated into part of my daily life. This other thing, I just can't get it to fit.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. And, you know, at the time of this recording, it's just after the new year. I know our listeners are getting this a couple months in. So at this point, as listeners, you are hearing this. You most likely had set out New Year's resolutions, New Year's goals. Based on research, over 90% have not stuck to those goals of going to the gym five days a week or eating healthy meals every meal. What do you find are the biggest mistakes that people make when they do set these intentions and they do set these goals?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, the biggest mistake is that you simply set a goal that's too hard for your everyday life. We have a tendency to only set goals when we are highly motivated. When we don't have motivation, like, think about that. Like, if you have zero motivation when you're like, I don't feel like it, I will, I don't want to do that, I'm not in the mood. That's not the frame of mind where we are setting goals. We set goals when we're like gung-ho. We're like, this is my year. I'm gonna do it. I can't wait. Like we see the big picture and we're like shooting for the moon. That is the mindset, like that's the state of being that we are in when we set a goal. So probably those 90% of people that you're referring to that don't accomplish their goals is because they probably set a goal that matched that level of motivation. You can only accomplish that goal if you are always at that level of motivation.
SPEAKER_00:And will we always be at that level, Megan? Tell us. No, I wish we could be. Can we build more motivation? Is that something we can change?
SPEAKER_01:We can, but it's kind of like saying, Can I be perpetually happy? It's impossible because motivation, just like happiness or sadness or anxiety, fear, excitement, they're all motivations that simply respond to our circumstances and our environment. So it would be inhumane to expect us to be highly motivated all the time. And so when someone is asking the question, like, I how do I get myself motivated more? How do I keep my motivation up? They're asking the wrong question because that's impossible to do. You simply cannot stay motivated. The right question to ask is, how can I make sure that my routine is still doable at my lowest levels of motivation? So if I wake up one day and I have all of those feelings of like, I'm not in the mood, I don't want to do this. What's the point? Why am I like, I know I should, but I don't want to. What is the routine that you can still do when you feel like that? Like if you were to follow like a fitness app and you opened up the daily routine and it's like a 60-minute-long workout that's full of burpees and squat jumps and like renegade rows and like walking lunges and Bulgarian split squats, like you're gonna be like, nope, I'm not gonna do that. Like it requires so much motivation to do that type of a workout. If you were to open up your workout app or your plan and it what it is that day is like a 10-minute mobility routine, you're like, I think I can totally do that. I can still do that. And so when you create goals that allow for your lowest levels of motivation, you are going to be far more consistent with those action steps that are help they're that are gonna help you reach your goals. So that's one of the yeah, that's one of the biggest mistakes that we always make is just setting a goal that's too hard. Another mistake that we have a tendency to make is that we set the same goals that we've always set.
SPEAKER_00:Isn't that the truth, right? And we all know that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, but yet we still do it time and again.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, especially with our fitness. It's like we we just like get in this infinite loop of feeling like we always need to be doing it the same way. Like my goal is to pull out that old workout routine that's been getting dusty in my corner and and pull that up and do that again. And it's like we keep going back to the same thing because maybe at one point that routine really fit your life at that phase of life. You know, that plan, it it just matched you perfectly for whatever reason. And because it matched you perfectly at that point in life, you felt great doing it and you had great results. You were able to do it consistently and it feels good. And so that's your memory is that routine, that thing I did, you know, back when I trained for that half marathon. Free kids when I was 21 years old.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:But I had an hour every single day to dedicate to working out. I remember feeling so good when I did that. So that's the thing I need to do again because I want to feel that way again. And the truth is you can do something else that fits your life right now that can still help your body feel that same way. And most likely it should look different because you've changed your circumstances, have changed, your daily routine looks different. So if you're still trying to do the same routine you did 10, 15, even a year ago, you're making a huge mistake here.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. And I know that one of the things that that high-achieving moms and just moms in general lack is time, right? We are pouring our energy into our careers, into our kids, into our home, into our spouses. And so it's not a realistic expectation to be able to get a 60-minute workout every single day when you've got a toddler and a four-year-old and you're juggling this and that. And I think one thing that I talk about often and I think resonates with a lot, I hear you see it as well, is just to really give yourself permission to be in the season of life that you're in and learn to accept change, right? And that our bodies change and our mindsets change and our environments change and our kids get older and we lose relationships and we're gain great things.
SPEAKER_01:It just looks different now. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that that was better or this is better or whatever. And one thing I love to say and remind women, especially women that are really high achieving, is that your capability does not always equal your capacity. Oof, love that. Okay. So you might know I am physically capable of doing an hour-long workout. I'm physically capable of showing up to that boot camp class. I've done it before. I know I can physically do that, but that does not mean that you have the capacity to do that right now, whether it's like time constraints or, you know, stress in your life, whether, you know, a whole number of things might be dictating, like, actually, yeah, you might be capable of that, but that doesn't mean you have the capacity to do that right now. So you need to be showing up to the things that you actually have the capacity to do and stop holding out for that other thing that you feel like you're 100% capable of. Because we all feel, we all raise our hands and say, we are superwomen. Like we know we're capable of a lot. We're told that all the time. Like you are capable of so much. That's true. We are, but that doesn't mean that you have the capacity to do that thing right now. And that's okay.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. And also it doesn't need to be at some expense, which it means that maybe you're now not sleeping because you feel like you have to, and quote unquote, should get up at 4 a.m. to get the workout in, or at the expense of missing your kids' only soccer game this week or whatever it might be. And so I love that you that you make fitness just so accessible and and helping people get to what they can do in that season of life. I'm wondering if you can can talk a little bit about. So, for the listener right now, we've got a range of listeners. Some probably have a very solid fitness routine who feel really good. And we have some who are probably like, I don't even know where to start. Like, I haven't hit the gym in two years. I feel uncomfortable in my body, my clothes don't fit. Like, there's so much, there's body confidence going on. What equipment do I need? How do listeners actually do this? What would be either some specific exercises or like what is that jumping off point? What do you recommend?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. The first thing to start with is something that is the lowest barrier to entry. So something that is familiar to you is the best thing to do. And I say for most women, that's just simply getting outside and going for a walk. And it could be as simple as five minutes, maybe 10 minutes just around the block, down and back if you have a long driveway. Just get in the rhythm of always going for a walk. You're now someone who goes for a short walk each day. You don't have to learn any techniques to go for a walk. There's no appointment that you have to make. It's totally free. You don't have to get special shoes. Like that is literally the lowest barrier to entry.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I love that you share that, Megan. You are 100% speaking my language as a former collegiate athlete, marathon runner, four-time knee surgery goer right here myself.
SPEAKER_01:Oh boy.
SPEAKER_00:It's only been in the last probably three or four years that I have truly learned to embrace walking. And I was a runner for years and years. And I was like, well, if I'm gonna go three miles, I might as well run it fast so I can be done with it and feel hard. It's hard and sweaty. But there is something so powerful about getting out and walking. And I love, again, the easiest barrier to entry is something that we can do. It's just making that choice to do it and reminding ourselves we have that power to choose ourselves every single day. So, what is the smallest thing that we can do to say yes to ourselves? Go out and walk. So when somebody would ask, well, Megan, does that count? Like, am I gonna get my calories? Like, what's your response to that? Because I think so much of this, and I know it is the mindset shift to like really working to become a person who moves their body regularly or takes care of their wellness versus I gotta check the box to get the walk-in or do the heavy lift. So does walking count? Like, tell me a little bit of the benefits of walking. I know them, but please share with our listeners because it's so much more than I think we give it credit for. Yeah. And what I mean, we know we start there and then the momentum builds, right?
SPEAKER_01:So that's so much of it too. Yeah, yes, yes, yes. Walking counts. And it's not about the calories, it has far more to do about the momentum that you're gaining. A lot of us have this mentality that every single like exercise opportunity I show up to needs to move the needle. So if this one workout is not going to like hit a calorie burn goal or, you know, push a certain number on the way, you know, whatever it might be, like it's not worth doing. Like we just have this mentality of like everything has to be this big game-changing workout for it to be worth doing. That's simply not true. Because with fitness, it is a momentum game. And it's a long game. And so if you start with walking, then you now always have something that can be a good baseline for you. So it doesn't mean that starting with walking is that that's where you're always going to be. And I can give you some next steps. Like once you get pretty good at walking consistently, what do we do next? But when you start with that, now you can now you know how to dial things back when you find yourself in a situation where you can't do the full thing that you had blossomed to. You now have something to dial back to. Like, let's say you go on vacation and you don't have access to a gym and you don't you're really busy all day. Can you still go for like a five-minute walk in the morning? Great. That is something. We dialed it back, sure, but we didn't turn it all the way off. And that's key for your consistency and the sustainability of your fitness routine. So the benefits of walking are off the charts. It's just extra movement in your day. It gets your body up straight out of a chair. A lot of us, if we're not walking, we tend to be sitting throughout the day. So it does get our hips moving, it does get the blood flowing. If you walk after a meal, it does a fantastic job of regulating your blood sugar. So you can help regulate your blood sugar, even with just a five to 10-minute walk post-meal, it helps your blood sugar out significantly. It is one of the only physical activities that actually reduces the stress response in your body. And there's probably a lot of women listening that have dabbled with adrenal fatigue or high levels of cortisol in their body. Most physical activity, most exercise actually gives a bit of a stress boost. In most situations, that's healthy for you. But for many women where they're like teetering on the edge of just always being stressed out, going for a leisure walk. This is not a brisk walk, a leisure walk in fresh air. It's one of the only physical activities you can do that we have actually seen the sympathetic nervous system tone down and the parasympathetic, that's your relaxed nervous system actually kick on. The only other physical activity that does that is rhythmic breathing. So I see it's worth doing.
SPEAKER_00:I love that we're having this conversation and I'm having a flashback to a call that I had a coaching with a coaching client a couple months ago. And she is a higher achiever. She's a leadership in a position at work, and we were talking about getting more movement just into her day amidst the work day, being in a sedentary position. And one of the things that she decided she wanted to try was just a little walk on her lunch break. And so she tried it. We came back the next week and I said, Well, how did it go? And she's like, I don't know if I can do it, Megan, because every time I go out for a walk, I just come back and like, even though it's not a workout, I'm sweaty. And I said, Why don't you try taking a slow walk? And it was one of those where it's like, it didn't even cross her mind that we could do. That that was allowed. That that was allowed and the benefits of it. You know, I share time and again and on social, like I do a walk every single day, whether it's two minutes to the bus stop, stop to drop off my kids, or whether it's an hour walk to explore a new route. And for me, it's become so much for that parasympathetic nervous system and to just help with the stress and help with the mental load release. And so, so good. Before we get into sharing what your amazing free gift is for our for our listeners, I'd love to share what is the next step then? So those that are walking regularly, because there's so much talk about the benefits of strength training, especially as we get into perimenopause and menopause. And I don't necessarily well, share a couple of those benefits why strength training is so important and load bearing is so important. And then what are maybe just a couple basic exercises that that women could walk away with today?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. There will come a point where walking is simply not going to be enough for you to get the results that you want to see in your body. And I don't want people to be like, oh no, maybe I shouldn't start with walking. Like, go back and listen to the last five minutes. Like that was really, really important. Okay. But let's say that you already have a rhythm of walking. What do we need to start phasing in into your routine to help your body now and for the next 20, 30, 40 years? What is the what's the thing that's going to have the greatest impact on your longevity, your functionality? And that there is simply no debate. Every study has shown that strength training is the number one thing. So there's going to come a point where the priority shift is going to be made where strength training over the course of the week will hopefully become your top priority style workout. And you'll fit in walking, probably still daily, as kind of like the supporting actor. Kind of as like the it helps you recover better. It helps you stay out of that sympathetic nervous system state and into, you know, it helps you come back. Cause anytime we start to ramp up the intensity of your workouts, we always want something kind of on the opposite side of the coin to help you recover well and make sure that you're not always staying in that ramped up state. Makes sense. Interesting, yeah. Tell us, tell us more. It's so important, especially if you've always been like a runner or a walker, a cardio queen. You just are not familiar with good functional weight training. If you jump straight into that, especially if you're in perimenopause and menopause, your tissues, your joints are a little bit more vulnerable to things like tendinitis and issues like wrist pain, neck pain. And you just don't have the foundation of technique yet. So I highly recommend that you start with at least. Month, hopefully three months of bodyweight only strength training first. And yes, that still counts as muscle building work. No one would argue with me that doing push-ups does not build muscles. Totally. That is one of the hardest strength training exercises, and there is no weights involved. So and I'm not saying you have to start with push-ups, but bodyweight only strength training work is muscle building work and it's the best place for you to start. So spend two or three months first, maybe just 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day of doing body weight only strength training. And probably around the three-month mark, we can start to add some weights into your hands.
SPEAKER_00:Now, Megan, I know I'm well versed in this area, just having been in the fitness space myself and been an athlete. Can you briefly talk? So you mentioned push-ups, two or three just other basic bodyweight exercises that I know people can then go find you in terms of getting proper form and making sure that the movement is functional and not just something they're going through the motions of. But alongside push-ups, what would be two or three other functional movement patterns that you would want women to be doing daily? Squats. Yes. Squats. I agree.
SPEAKER_01:Squats are probably the top of the list. You will need to squat until the day that you die. And the moment you think in your mind, I can no longer squat, that's the day that you start dying. Like functionally, you have to be able to sit the weight of your body down and get yourself back up. So squats, just doing air squats, learning proper technique with air squats, like that is like foundational. Phenomenal. Highly recommend it. So squats, we've got that. That's kind of a lower body pushing exercise. I already showed you push-ups. Do those with your hands on a countertop. If you can't do a push-up on the floor, don't do them on your knees. Because when we do them on your knees, we're not training a really important component of the push-up, which is the plank. So the core.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The core matters so much. So instead of making it easier by being on your knees, make it easier for yourself by elevating your hands. So it could be up on a countertop. That way you're able to go through a full range of motion while you do a push-up. And then we got to get your core. That's probably the most important. We got to start there, actually. So training your core is really, really important. And one of the most important core exercises is learning how to do a profit proper pelvic tuck. I know that. Yeah, like we could, I could talk about the pelvic tuck for like ages or the pelvic tilt. We'll have a whole nother 30-minute conversation on just the pelvic. Yes. It is so fundamental for learning how to do like dead bugs and understanding good proper positioning and planks. But adding in even just one core exercise a day, it can revolutionize the way that your body feels for life. So upper body, lower body, core, those three moves would be ideal.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. Thank you so much for sharing those and breaking them down. And again, listeners, you can definitely check out Megan in terms of seeing these physically in a video as well. But I love, I love bringing it back to the core because the core is the base of all movement. And just like we are really focusing on here in the Rockstar Mom, just really coming into tune with the core of who you are so we can feel most confident and feel best in our lives. I'm so, I'm so excited that you were able to join us for this conversation for high achievers and just how do we make fitness and movement and feeling good in your body accessible? And I think, I think we've we've had a good amount of that conversation today. One big takeaway that I just want to point out is what you what you shared in terms of capability doesn't equal capacity. And so, as so many of our conversations are going, is continuing as high achievers, as strivers, as type A, as recovering perfectionists, as amazing, amazing women that we are, is to give ourselves some grace and really continue to allow us to be in the season that we're in, know that we can move forward. So feels good. So before we sign off, Megan, I'm just curious if you have any final words for our listeners today as they get ready to go pick up their kid or get back to work.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that you reiterated the your capability does not always equal your capacity. I think one also one really good takeaway is for women to get a baseline for themselves. We have a tendency to be either all the way on or all the way off. And so instead of that, turn your habits into more of a dial. So if your baseline is just, gosh, I can't get my whole workout that I had planned done today. So I'm just not going to do anything. Stop doing that to yourself anymore. Instead, just dial things way back and say, maybe I can just do, you know, the five-day core tune-up video. It's less than 10 minutes. I can do it on my living room floor at night before I go to bed. It will feel really good. Or maybe I just go outside and do like a 10-minute walk. Like just start to get in the in the habit of instead of doing nothing, I'm going to still do something. And that I know is going to feel so good. And that is giving me the momentum I need. Where, you know, a year from now, I'm going to look back and be like, wow, I've actually come so far with my body and I feel so good.
SPEAKER_00:I love that so much. Megan, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for showing just a glimpse of your expertise and enthusiasm and passion for helping women in this season of life really tune into their bodies and take care of themselves at a deeper level. So thank you, thank you for being part of the Rockstar Mom. And we'll chat soon. Thank you for having me. This was fun. Thank you so much for tuning into the Rockstar Mom podcast. If today's episode resonated with you, here's how we can keep this momentum going. First, be sure to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Next, I'd be so grateful if you took a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps us reach even more women who are ready to live more intentional, fun filled lives. Lastly, please share your insights on social media and be sure to tag me at Megan Caldwell PDX so we can connect and inspire other rock stars to live their best lives too. Again, I am so glad that you are here, and I'll see you next time.