Progress Over Plateaus: Intensity, Progression, and the Pitfalls of Trendy Workouts

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Now onto our episode!

In this episode, we are joined by a powerhouse trio of returning guests from Physical Equilibrium: Sara Dimmick, Sarah Currie, and Jesse Barnett. Based out of New York City and the Hamptons, these seasoned experts specialize in a wide variety of modalities, including post-rehab fitness, beginner weightlifting, Pilates, and tailored nutrition counseling. The conversation dives deep into the current landscape of boutique fitness, exposing the hidden pitfalls of popular group classes that prioritize an exhausting "ass-whooping" over smart, progressive programming, warm-ups, and injury prevention.

The guests tackle major fitness misconceptions, unpacking the buzzword "toned" and explaining the physiological realities behind actual muscle growth and body composition. They explain why adding tiny three-pound weights to a cycling or Pilates class will not make you significantly stronger, emphasizing that true strength requires much heavier loads. The episode also explores the concept of "newbie gains," shedding light on why simply showing up to the exact same high-intensity class four or five days a week will inevitably lead to a physical plateau. To see continuous results, whether your primary goal is longevity, injury prevention, or aesthetics, your exercise routine must involve periodization and adapt over time.

Finally, the team shares their undeniable truths for physical adaptation: whatever exercise you choose must consistently apply the right intensity, duration, and frequency to force your body to change. They stress the importance of balancing your personal fitness weaknesses. For example, runners need to start lifting weights, and weightlifters need to incorporate cardio. They also highlight the massive role that dedicated diet and nutrition work plays in any physical transformation. Tune in to learn how to move past your fitness fears and discover more about Physical Equilibrium's customized offerings, from their beginner "Lift Club" classes to precise metabolic resting rate testing.

Connect with them: physeq.com

Past Episode with Sarah Currie- Strength Training: The Holy Grail of Fat Loss

Past Episode with Sara Dimmick- Triathlons: Train for the Race!

Past Episode with Jesse Barnett- Don’t Dance Till You Break: Injury Prevention for Performers

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

There's a fine line between training someone hard so they get results, but then also not injuring them. And you have to manage people's expectations and say, look, either you have this serious back problem where I can't load you up. It's going to take time to one build the foundation of muscles so that then we can lift heavy to then change your body. So sometimes things have to have a longer timeline and you have to manage your client's expectations.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

I own Sneha Physical Therapy, a private practice in New York City, and created the course Master Your Pelvic Floor to help you transform the way you think about and move your body. Use discount code FIT20 for a special 20% discount exclusively from my listeners. At the link in all show notes. Each episode brings phenomenal guests in the health and wellness space who share inspiring tips and tangible advice. All things health and wellness starts right here. We're doing something really cool here today, which we have never done before, which is that we have three returning guests all together who all uh have experience working with uh a company called Physical Equilibrium, which is based out of uh New York. And all three of them are phenomenal experts in fitness and health and training. And they also all come with a personal background in all of that and their own journeys and their own relationship with fitness and health. And um, I'm gonna make sure I link all of your past show notes into, sorry, your past uh episode into the show notes because we do deep dives into your stories and into a very specific topic. But today we are going to have a really interesting conversation about the landscape of exercise, fitness, and workout in New York specifically, but also probably broader into the United States. Um, and so before we get into that, let's do an introduction so that listeners understand who they are hearing from today. So we'll start up with Sarah Dimmock.

SPEAKER_04 2:37

Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. And uh my name is Sarah Dimmick, and I founded Physical Equilibrium in 2004 as a personal training small facility that really focuses on personal training. But over the time, we've expanded into Pilates, triathlon, and running coaching, as well as what we really specialize in now is post-rehab fitness and taking clients from rehab and physical therapy back into the gym and teaching them how to work out with their injuries, around their injuries, what they can and can't do as they go forward and get healthy and fit again. So that is primarily what we do in physical equilibrium in New York City. And then we also have a gym in the Hamptons as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Hi guys, I'm Sarah Curry, and I started working for Sarah Demic back in 2006. Uh, I am currently a registered dietitian and a personal trainer. So I like to teach people how to lift properly, get strong, and change their body comp.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Hey everyone, uh, this is Jesse, and um basically I came from a classical dance background that led me into Pilates through the uh Kane School uh in New York. That uh is what got me working for the Sarah's at PE. And then they converted me to the um, as as Curry says, the dark side, so the training side of things as well. So I'm also a strength coach. And as of the day after Memorial Day, I'm starting my physical therapy program uh at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

Yes, so so so excited for you, Jesse. And wonderful that, you know, you guys come in with like different backgrounds and different personal experiences. But I think what I love about you guys is the message, the underlying message of health is like very similar. And actually, one of the things that I love about all three of you are is the myth busting that you do, which is so necessary and it's like very like polarized, do this, do that kind of a thing. You guys really come in with like the evidence and the facts, and like like, guys, like we need to focus on the important things here. And um, you know, I I just wanted to give a quick shout out to that. And also another plug to encourage listeners to really listen to each of your individual episodes because I love them and they bring so much great information. Um, so without further ado, let's jump into our lovely topic of conversation today. Um, we are going to be discussing, like I mentioned, exercise, workout, um, and fitness uh in New York City and abroad, uh, and into a broader space. I would love for you guys to jump in and get started with maybe a little background on what did it look like maybe on a pre-COVID or a couple of years ago, and why is this a relevant conversation for us to be speaking about?

SPEAKER_04 5:51

Well, I can start and say that when we opened our gym that we are currently in, the location that we're currently in, um, we did that in about 2017. So pre-COVID, that was when a lot of the boutique fitness was really booming in New York City. I mean, there were little studios everywhere: Pilates, strength training, crossfit, um, dance fitness classes. I mean, everything. And when we opened our facility, I went and because I had been in the personal training space, so I wasn't really taking classes. So I went and I took classes all around New York City to just to just see what the landscape was like. And what I what I found was um in general, there wasn't much um focus on the uh like the level of class. Like they were all open and there wasn't a a good place for beginners to go. Um and there weren't things like a good warm-up before we jumped right into running or some bigger strength moves. There was no muscle activation, there was no dynamic stretching at the beginning. It was really just uh there was a lot of um, I don't know, I don't even know how to say it, but it was it it seemed a little bit um dicey for especially beginners. Um, people who are more fit could jump into these classes and be fine. But um we from our standpoint of the post-rehab, I really wanted to create a space where people could come as a beginner and learn the basics and learn what to do. And then maybe they could go back and take those classes and with more knowledge of what they were doing for their own body and and not just taking instructor and instructors' um class and then just trying to apply it to them, to them when it when they really needed something a little bit more personalized. So um I would start with that. That's what we created at physical equilibrium. We do mostly one-on-one training, but we do have small group classes that teach beginners how to lift. So that's also our focus. Um maybe Sarah and Jesse can also talk about um how they also fit into um our brand.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Well, also, Sarah, when you took all those classes, nobody hardly ever asked if anybody had any injuries. And if they did, most of the instructors didn't know how to deal with it. Uh, a good friend of mine went to CrossFit. I know she has a low back discernation. I know she has a menisc meniscus tear and a rotator cuff tear. And I said, Why are you going to CrossFit? Uh again, no warm-ups, no didn't prime the rotator cuff to bench press. She can't even do a push-up, let alone a pull-up. You know, they do those dumb kipping pull-ups in CrossFit. So um, yeah, that that was, I just wanted to mention that also.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Well, I think Dimek brings up something that um was certainly my experience. So I graduated college in 2017 and sort of around the time I was graduating college and immediately afterward, I was taking a lot of uh various group fitness classes in the city, mostly because I was coming out of this dance program, and that was a common side hustle was um was to teach these classes. So I would get guested in for free by my friends. So I did um different like uh circuit style classes. There was a lot of spinning that happened, very Pilates adjacent um uh classes, um, things like that. And my memory of it, which based on what my clients tell me now is still very much the same thing. The classes are are mostly about intensity, right? They are designed to make you work very hard. And this seems to be regardless of whatever the modality is that they're messing with. The point of the class is to make you work extremely hard, not necessarily smart, right? And it's most of the time those things overlap in a perfect world, but they don't always, right? Um, but the classes are not necessarily designed to follow uh what we might consider sort of like a logical structure, you know, there's not like a lot of progression that um we might utilize in our space and with our our clients, um, or that we would argue most people in an intense and fitness environment should be following. They're just kind of zero to 100 to Dimmick's point, right? And then it just stays at 100 the entire time, right? So, I mean, as far as expectations for these classes, and we can get more into this, like what should a person expect to get out of these kinds of classes is just understanding what they are designed for. And it is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just kind of kick your butt, right? Um, and so if there's something else that you need, or you need something more specific than just kind of an ass flipping, um, some of these classes may not be entirely, you know, appropriate for you, right? Or you just need to know that going into it as far as what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

Yeah, I'm just gonna jump in and add that this is also mostly in a pre-COVID era that I would often, my patients would often ask me, like, should I take this class? And I'll be like, I don't know. And then I would take that class just for figuring it out, figuring out if they should take it. Because I was like, this is crazy. I am like a physical therapist and I should at least be able to advise on what's happening in my local community, whether that's like fit for this person or not, and be able to give advice and referrals. Um, and so I came across the same kind of a thing where I was like, I know that I'm like pretty strong and I know like my personal practice and like what I'm doing, but I'm like, I'm not able to keep up with the 500th repetition of these arm circles that we're doing that my upper traps is now like dying from. And like, I just like we need to take a break for like two seconds and like put the weights down and just like do some mobility first, maybe that would be a good idea, you know? Um, and I came across the same thing. I won't name the uh particular places, obviously, but um, you know, some are better than others. But overall, I would tell my patients at the time, like, I think really the best thing that you could do is try like try some of those things. And if you're really set on going to it, listen to your body. And I'm gonna tell you what your markers are. So you don't always listen to what's happening in the class. You just go there to feel community if that's what you want. Like if you're like, I need to go to a class because I need to feel like I'm in a group of people doing something together because that's emotionally, psychologically helpful, fine. But here's what you do for your body, and you do have to be okay with and not care about what people think of you when you're doing the five, everyone else is doing the 500th repetition poorly, and I have you doing something else. And here is a something else, you know. So that was just like an idea to jump off of and like that. I agree and resonate with that was what the landscape kind of was. And now I'm curious if we were to jump into, I don't actually know personally. I don't take classes, obviously, in the city post-COVID, maybe one or two to test things out for patients. But what is it looking like right now? What are you guys seeing in these classes? We have, like Jesse said, all these different modalities. We have the yoga, the yoga lattis, the Pilates, the variations of the dirotonics, all the things to help.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Hot Pilates happening now, apparently. And I and I gotta say, as someone who can't tolerate, I tried the hot yoga thing a few times and it just did not work out for me. Um, the thought of doing hot Pilates, I just can't fathom. So I mean, teach their own, but yeah, there's all sorts of interesting fusions of things going on.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

So our our clients still take a fair amount of classes, but we have taught them, like what you just said, on what to avoid. So um, I have a client who spins regularly and she just she skips the weights. They the the arm stuff they do is not going to build muscle. Um, some of the stuff she's had to do on the bike has hurt her back. So she she knows what to do because we instructed her on how to do it. Um, but what I'm seeing lately in these classes is, you know, strength training has become trendy. Everybody's talking about it. Oh, you have to lift heavy to change your lean, your body composition. You have to lift heavy for your bone mass density. So I started taking Pilates with Jesse one-on-one back in like 2020 or 2021. And so recently I've started going to some group Pilates classes. And look, it depends on the teacher, the type of experience you get. But I go for Pilates. But I'm noticing it's not really that much Pilates. There might be a tiny bit of abs and core, but then it's sponges and stuff. And all these women in the class think that their bodies are going to change. And as Jesse says, get into the gym and pick up something heavy. So it's been the they've been watered down or diluted because of, I guess, the masses demand these trends. They want a full body workout. But I go, I want Pilates.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah, and I think you're correct that, first of all, it's great that um there's a lot of conversation in the mainstream around uh lifting, around muscle mass and strength and bone density, and all of these things, and that's all great. Um, what then has happened is because that is, like you said, trendy, um, something like a Pilates class or a yoga class or a spin class is going to try to integrate something so that they can say, see, look, we're also giving you strength training. Right. Now, the problem with that is, which is sort of in the execution of it, is often what's being given to you uh is just unfortunately not something that's going to have that result, right? Let's take strength, for instance. All right. Um, that word gets used a lot, I think, in inappropriate ways. Um and yes, it's true that we all need to focus on being strong for a number of reasons. Um, but if you are at a spin class and they tell you to, you know, do some upper body exercises with the weights that are provided, and like your heaviest option is like three to four pounds, that unfortunately, just by definition, will not make you strong. That might do something for you. I'm not saying it is a bad thing to do whatever arm exercises with the three or four pound weights, but that cannot make you strong. Strength is 100% about the uh the load that you are pushing, pulling, squatting, whatever it is. That is the definition of strength, right? So it has to be relatively heavy for the individual for you to get those strength benefits. And a tiny weight or a theraband doesn't do that, right? So kind of off Mike, uh, right before we started, I had I went on a little mini rant about specificity and just understanding that um depending on what your goal is, that requires like a specific um approach, type of exercise, type of loading, type of modality. Um, and so if your priority is something like strength or muscle mass, um tiny little lightweights won't get you there, right? But if your goal is something more like um muscular endurance or like active mobility or some more, I don't know, cardio kind of benefits, something else, all right. Well, that that looks a little different. What you're doing in class might do it for you. But um, you know, to Curry's point, and then I promise I'll stop, of things being watered down. Um, the more you try to add these layers on top of layers on top of layers, oh look, we can do this for you now, oh look, we can do this for you now, you do start getting diminishing returns.

unknown 18:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:13

And then I would add to that too, there's no periodization of classes. You're taking these high-intensity classes. Some people are taking them four, five times a week. Um, it either they're gonna set themselves up for injury or they're gonna reach a point and then they're not gonna get better. You have to change your workout every so often. You have to add more resistance or more load or more demand to then uh you know increase your strength and or increase your whatever you're whatever you're working towards. You're if you're working on running for running marathon or doing a triathlon, you have to increase your volume. Um, but a lot of these classes are the same all the time. So you'll reach a level and then you kind of stagnate there too. So um you have to think about those things and how do you progress past a certain level? Uh, or how do you also not get hurt if you're jumping into something and you're doing this several days a week? When do you take a rest? When do you back off? And so, in a personal training aspect with somebody who's helping you design a program and then maybe integrating some classes around that specific program for you, you're gonna get better results than just going to the same class four to five days a week.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Yeah, I'm gonna comment on that. Well, firstly, uh Sarah Dimmick just mentioned uh what my dad says all the time when he's pretending to train, which is, I am shocking my muscles. It's like his phrase to use, I'm shocking them. I'm like, okay, dad, that means you're changing your workout. Is that what you're doing? He's like, yes, I'm doing all different things now. I'm like, okay, good for you. Um, but I think that one of the things that you guys are touching on, which I think is really important, is the variety. Um, I actually like just before this jumped off of a uh episode with a nutritionist and um she was commenting on food variety and how like you can't just like keep eating the same things and restricting other things. Like it's customized, it's personalized. And I was talking to her about like how exercise and movement is very similar, which is our conversation right now. And I think maybe listeners who are wondering, like, hey, like I am a Pilates person. This is what I do. Like, this is my thing, this is the only thing that I do. It's what I like to do, and that's great. Or I'm a runner and I am run, and that is it. I, of course, stretch before I run or after I run, and that's it. And that's what I want to do. Um, I encourage you, and I would really love for you to open up your palate to movement because I think one of the things that's really important is building longevity and resist resilience in our bodies, which is the home to us, involves creative creativity. And um, that changes from season to season in your life sometimes, whether you have an injury or going through a physical challenge or chronic illness, it looks different from person to person. But I think that one thing that you guys are saying, and I want to just like highlight and pull out of, is you have to be very specific with what you're doing when you're doing it, and change what you're doing over time as you're doing it. Did I say grammatically correct things just now?

SPEAKER_00 21:52

It made perfect sense. I don't know, grammatically doesn't matter, but it made perfect sense.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

I'm curious what your guys' thoughts are. On that, on a tangible sense. How do people achieve this? What do you do?

SPEAKER_02 22:03

So I have a great example. Um, I have a client who didn't work out most of her life, you know, maybe in her 40s, discovered Pilates. So, of course, she starts going to classes four or five times a week. There would be a private, there'd be a mat class, there'd be a group class. So, you know, now four years later, she's in her 50s and her weight is increasing. Her bone, she has osteopenia. And so I said Pilates was great for you in the beginning, but now you have to start picking up some weight to change your body composition, you know, build some muscle, burn some fat, improve your bone mass density. Um, on a side note, in my nutrition practice, I do metabolic testing and I track body composition on the in-body. And of course, we tested her and her metabolism wasn't very high, and she was probably eating way too much. So I said, you have to get what you want, you have to change some things. So we're working on that behavior change. It's very hard for her to add two weight training sessions per week and to start paying attention to what she eats, but it's it's happening. It's just gonna take a while.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Right. And I think this also um uh ties in two things really nicely together. One is the idea of progression. Um uh may I don't maybe your listeners are listeners are not familiar with the concept of newbie gains, but um, this is very relevant to a class. I don't know, Dr. Gazi, are you not familiar with? You kind of made a face.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

I'm assuming that it means that when you get started with something in the beginning, you see some like immediate hypertrophy and like right when you're working out, and then you feel sore, and then it makes you feel good, and then you keep going, and then you don't, because it doesn't feel good after a little while when you plateau. No?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

More more or less, yeah. New newbie gains, uh, which I mean certainly I'm I'm used to thinking of mostly in like a bodybuilding context, but does apply to any form of of training. Um basically, yes, when you are new at something, you would uh have a certain degree of adaptation pretty quickly. Um, and that could last for maybe a number of months. I mean, I feel like lifting-wise, when I discovered a barbell, I had a couple years where I just like didn't even train incredibly perfectly. My diet was also like fine, but not excellent. And it didn't matter, just like numbers kept going up on the bar, muscle kept like getting onto my body. Um, but as you approach um a more like intermediate or advanced sort of level in any given thing, like your progress does slow down, and that's when things need to become more specific. So going back to classes, and where I think some folks do get into trouble, is they are maybe um not a very trained individual. Maybe they're leading kind of a sedentary lifestyle, and they start taking a class of some kind, right? And that is automatically a progression for them. Wouldn't it doesn't matter what it is. So they are gonna have very uh immediate and noticeable adaptations of whatever kind, um, but it doesn't last very long. So there's a they assume, well, this thing is working for me, so I'm going to do it six days a week. And then get very confused and discouraged six months or a year later, when that progress stops and maybe even kind of reverts a little bit, right? They kind of take a few steps back. And it's because they're missing that idea of progression, right? It was appropriate at first because they went from zero to something. But then when it came time to up the ante, add in other things to their programming, or just yeah, up the weight, up the number of repetitions, up the intensity, whatever it is, start paying attention to diet or recovery more. Um, that didn't happen, right? And I think that happens to a lot of folks. And going then back again to Dimic's earlier point, these classes are not programmed over time, right? You are showing up and doing what is scheduled for that given day, and there's not a plan for that class beyond that one session, right? So if you have some type of goal, which I think most people do, that requires some type of long-term programming, just going in and doing what you're told to do in that particular class, no matter how many times a week, at a certain point, you will run into a wall there, right? And you're going to need to find a way to, you know, progress. And whoever like the instructor is in that class may not necessarily be the one to be able to do that for you.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Wait, is this like how my tennis teacher told me that I had some pretty quick gains my first few years, but now I'm not gonna get any better unless I play like five days a week. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

This is a newbie game for anybody. I recently like, I'm not a runner. Um, that kind of ate a joke between uh myself and one of the other trainers at the gym is just like how little cardio I do. I understand I need to change that, currently doing it. So I go to the track now on Mondays. I've started running some intervals, and for like a month, every time I hit the track, my 400 time just went down. Like, oh, I just shaved a second off my 400 again. That's gonna stop pretty quickly, right? It's already happening. We're like, oh, I'm not just running faster every single time anymore, right? I'm now getting to a point where if I want to keep progressing, well, something's gonna have to change. You're gonna have to run more often or or change the workouts or something like that, right? But yes, everybody has a period when you do something new where you are very, very um sensitive to adaptation, but that does not stick around forever.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

So discouraging. I know it was so discouraging. I unfortunately will not be in the Olympics anytime soon.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

I have a question for you guys. What do you think, based on all these people that you've like trained for in any capacity, right? What do you feel are like their top three goals overall? I'm gonna assume one is just I would like to lose some weight. I assume I hear there, I hear that a lot. What are like one or two more that you guys feel are like are your top things that you hear from patients? Like what do they get stuck on that they feel like they need to achieve?

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Well, lately I have a fair amount of women in their 50s who are afraid of becoming old and decrepit. So they want to be strong and able and they don't want to trip on the street and they want to be able to care put their suitcase in the overhead compartment. So I they of course have aesthetic goals. You know, everyone wants to look a certain way, but they don't want to put in the work. Um so I'm fired. Um, no, I I like the trend of women wanting to be stronger and able.

SPEAKER_04 29:09

I would say I have some clients who are afraid of being injured again. And so um sometimes I have to take things very slowly and gain their trust in certain movements. Um, but then they'll also say, like Sarah, you know, they want to look a certain way. So there's a fine line between training someone hard so they get results, but then also not injuring them. And you have to manage people's expectations and say, look, either you have this serious back problem where I can't load you up. It's gonna take time to one, build the foundation of muscles so that then we can lift heavy to then change your body. So sometimes things have to have a longer timeline and you have to manage your clients' expectations.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Yeah. Uh I think the three of us need to also keep in mind that um our client population, just given the sort of facility that we're in, we do get this mix of, hey, so I've got all these aches and pains. And also the doctor told me I've torn X, Y, and Z, and my disc looks like this. Um, but I'd also like to be hot. So can we do both? Right. Um, and that does happen a lot for us. Um as the one person here who's worked at a classical Pilates studio, um, that experience was different with that client population. That was constantly an aesthetic thing. Um, when I was in that space. Uh and this is where I would like to very I promise it'll be brief, but get on a quick soapbox about the word toned and what it does and does not mean. Because I heard that all the time is I'm really looking um just to be like a little more toned. I'm like, okay, interesting. Can you like kind of give me an example? And then they would describe something, or might just like point to my arm and be like, like that. You know? I'm like, okay, well, I do pull-ups constantly. So um number one, the word tone has nothing to do with the way that you look. Um, I know I don't need to tell any of you this, but listeners, uh, muscle tone is basically how taut your muscle is at rest, right? Um, your your muscles need a little bit of tension in there, passively, or else your skeleton would just be flopping around all the time, which would be bad. Um, tone has nothing to do with the way that you look. Usually when people describe a toned physique, they are describing someone who's actually at least a little bit muscular, um, and just has a really low body fat percentage, so you can see everything.

unknown 31:52

Right?

SPEAKER_00 31:52

This is sort of what toned is. And by the way, constantly working on both of those things, big fan of you know wanting to achieve those goals, um, but it's not what toned means. And um, I will say in my experience in those Pilates spaces, like that is not necessarily the space to be getting that either. But I was um asked to help make people toned all the time. Um, and then when I would tell them, pretty sure you're gonna also need to get into the gym uh and start lifting some stuff and focus on your cardio and your um macros or just your nutrition in general, you know, in addition to your maybe a little bit of Pilates, that was not usually received very well. That was not an answer that was appreciated.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

No. Well, I tell people there are three variables there's strength, there's cardio, and there's diet. What are you willing to work on and manipulate to get what you want? I try to help them with all three. You know, I have someone who lifts really heavy, hard four days a week, does a lot of cardio, doesn't really want to work on the diet, but the other two are good enough that she looks great. Um and then I have other people who don't want to move around. And I'm like, well, then you you have to work on your nutrition. You have to. There's then there's no other choice. So yeah, those a good takeaway from this today would be what are the there's three variables, what am I gonna manipulate to get what I want?

SPEAKER_03 33:24

Yeah, and kind of going back to like what you guys said about overall themes. There's like they're a bucket with like people who want to achieve aesthetics. And I think that's to some level, most people in some capacity, even if it's small. Um, and then there's the longevity, right? Like, I don't like I care for my patients too. Like uh Sarah Dimmick just said, I don't want to be a little old lady, I don't want to be a little old man, I don't want to be hunched over with a walking stick if I can do something about it, you know? And then there's also the bucket that's like, I would like to be functional and not get injured. Like I need to not have knees that I cannot walk upstairs with, or I need to be able to put my suitcase over. These are like the functional, I just need to like survive in this world with without everyday limitations and not be having these like chronic injuries. I think the ratio of, I feel like most people have those three goals to and the ratio to which they have them is different based on again the season of life that they may be on or the experiences that they've had. Um, and I I think that, you know, at least the way that I describe it, and I'd love because we all have different ways of explaining things. And I'm curious um what you say uh to this um concept is you you need to have some level of mobility, stretching, it's like the common term that people often think of. You need to be able to move your body into semi-end ranges or towards end ranges, depending on your situation, to make sure that we are staying, quote unquote, what people hear of as flexible. That I know it's like a loaded word, but that's what people think of. When they think stretching, they think flexibility. So I try to keep it simple and say, we need to be able to move our joints. And then I say we need to make sure that our heart stays healthy. So we need to do the what we call endurance-based, the cardio. And then I'm like, you need to do what Jesse said, is just go and lift something heavy, often, very regularly, and get it specific about what you're doing and do it in a progressive manner. And it, I'm like, as long as you can do all of that and also make sure you breathe and have your mental health in check. That's like these like physical, physiological. I'm not talking nutrition yet, and I'm not talking some of the other markers of health, like sleep. Um, but from a physiological sense, if you can do those in differing ratios that are right for your body, you can and should stay relatively healthy with maintaining aesthetics, maintaining longevity, trying to stay functional. And what you do is very dependent. It's like totally different. You get two people up the street, and what one person should be doing to achieve the particular results looks very different from what somebody else should be doing, right? And so I'm curious to hear from each of you. The question is if you could um create some kind of uh not it's not necessarily a blueprint or prescription or like a plan, but if you could say there are some undeniable truths that people can and should follow, what do you feel like are some of your go-to things that kind of, because everyone who's listening are across age groups, across genders and across the world right now, what are some truths that you feel like people should really, really understand, really, really take away? It could be the myth busting that we do right now, if he would like to. But um, what are you guys thinking?

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Well, I was gonna Oh no, go, Dennis, go.

SPEAKER_04 36:50

Well, I had, you know, it's kind of funny that all three of us are here right now talking because like as far as I, you know, I grew up being a dancer, um, and I then got into trap on and running. And but you know what? And and I do like to lift weights, but like I don't like to lift weights that much. And so, you know what? I have a trainer that trains me and makes me lift heavy. I can do cardio, I can get on my Peloton, do cardio. When my before my knee surgery, I could go out for a run. And you know what? I like to like lie on my mat and do a little bit of core work and Pilates or whatever you want to call it. Um, so I have a personal trainer. Sarah Curry has a Pilates teacher because she's very good in the weight room. She can do cardio on her own. She plays tennis, but she does not want to go into stretch and do core and do so, and then Jesse, he's focusing on his cardio right now because he is a Pilates teacher and he likes to strength train, but he knows he's lacking in cardio. So it's very funny. I would say, like, you could for yourself, know what you do really well. You know, say you're you're a runner, you're great at going out and running, you've run marathons, but you know you don't do strength training. Find a trainer once or twice a week, or go take a class that you know gives you good strength training for runner-specific things. You don't need an orange theory class where you're getting on the treadmill and going doing more running or mixing in a berries class that has running. You already run. Don't do more of that. Do strength training if you are a runner. Same thing if you were a Pilates person and you go to Pilates class. You're not doing strength training, maybe you're not doing cardio. Mix in a cycling class or get a trainer who's gonna give you a strength training program. So that would be my recommendation for someone. So you know your strengths. Do you know what you'll do on your own? Where you're lacking is where you need to invest in your health and and wellness. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Yeah, I would say main themes, um, because I think this can be applied to any modality. This could be you personally in the gym, this could be you in one of these classes. Um uh three things everybody probably needs to be thinking about or making sure that they're adhering to, regardless of what their let's just call it personal programming is like uh intensity, uh duration, and frequency. Right? So, number one intensity um uh is something that I discuss with um all my clients, whether it is Pilates or my um strength clients in the gym. Um if what you're doing is not intense enough, essentially, if it does not feel uh difficult, um, you are probably not gonna get out of it what you want, right? And actually it doesn't matter if that is your uh uh Pilates yoga mindfulness kind of work, if that is trying to get bigger or stronger muscles in the gym, if that's trying to get faster on the track. Even like flexibility, you want to be more flexible. Whatever it is you're doing to get more flexible is probably gonna have to be a little intense, right? Things that feel really easy, breezing super chill, don't tend to create adaptation physically, right? There's um, you should definitely do really chill things in your life for great reasons. But if you're trying to make some physical change, it's gonna have to be intense. You want bigger muscles, you have to push your sets at least pretty close to failure, right? If you want to be stronger, the weight does have to go up. You want to be more flexible, that has to be kind of intense as well, or your muscles do not get the hint. And then duration, you have to be exposing yourself to that intensity for like long enough periods of time. You know, um, it needs to be for uh a sustained enough stimulus, again, that your body gets the hint. Right. So if you want your cardio to be a little bit better, for instance, a two-minute jog, not wonderful, right? You need to sustain that for several minutes in order for like your heart and your lungs to get the hint. Uh and then frequency, it's got to be often enough, you know. Um, having a week where you manage to get a couple good workouts in, but then you just kind of skip the next three weeks and then are back, that doesn't really do it either. The stimulus needs to be relatively constant, right? So, regardless of what training you're into or what you're trying to get out of it, it needs to be intense. You need to have decent duration for your um exercise, and it needs to be relatively frequent.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

Great. Sarah Kiri, do you have anything to add to this?

SPEAKER_02 41:42

Uh not really. They said it extremely well. Um, when Jesse was talking about making it uncomfortable and putting in the work, the same thing goes for your nutrition. I have so I have so many people who don't want to track, who don't want to pay attention to what they eat, think they can have something three, four times a week. Like it's the same amount of effort that goes into changing your nutrition habits as what Jesse said about improving your strength or your cardio. But that's a that could be a whole separate book, book, episode. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

No, but generally things, yeah, things that are gonna produce results do need to be challenging uh to some degree. Um, I mean, to your nutrition point, um, Curry has helped me a lot in the last um, I remember the last year in particular, I was hitting a certain plateau um with some of my goals in the gym. And I decided like, okay, it's time to really dial in on my nutrition. And um we did my metabolic testing, we talked a lot about, you know, different macro splits and things like that. Um, and I would, it's not crazy hard for me now, but um getting into the habit of doing those things and making those choices and doing the trial and error, figuring out what was best for my goals nutritionally. Yeah, that was a challenge. Like that wasn't incredibly easy, but um has absolutely paid off.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

And once you do it enough, once you weigh it a few times, once you measure it a few times, then you can eyeball it. Or, you know, lean lean people tend to eat the same thing all the time. Well, within, you know, there is variety within the categories of food to what you said earlier, Dr. Ghazi, about the nutrition you had spoken to earlier about variety. But um once you do it enough, it's very easy and you don't have to track, you don't have to write it down. You get after you do it, put in the work, and then it's a lot easier.

SPEAKER_03 43:37

Yeah, and I think what we're all speaking to is like fundamentally new skills take a shift in your psychology to begin with. And so this conversation is actually for like people who are already moving their bodies to enhance the way that they're moving your their bodies. So somebody who might be listening to this who's like, I haven't even begun my health, I haven't even gotten into one of those classes. To even have a comment on them or haven't even lifted a single weight or had a single run in my life, or lately, you know. I think what we haven't touched on fully though, and it's a whole episode on itself, is getting yourself to change habits and the psychology of understanding your body and getting into movement patterns that serve you and fulfill you and bring you joy and happiness is actually the first step, right? Like you have to find some kind of joy and happiness and connection with movement, which starts with connecting with your body. And then once, for I guess most of our listeners who are interested based on the tagline for this uh episode, who are trying to enhance that and get more out of it, that also takes a shift in your psychology because you might be stuck on doing things a certain way. And you need to actually change the way that you're moving entirely. And that's scary sometimes. Like I like my listeners know this, but and I don't know if you guys know this, but I also grew up as a dancer. My mom is a dance teacher. I did dance, it's yoga certified flexibility, full splits, oversplit, back bends, all the things. Stress fractured my spine, have a grade two spondylolysthesis, fully like still managing those symptoms. I had that in my early 20s. And that's the first time that I really started picking up weights and slowly getting into that journey of stability and acute awareness of my body. And that was scary. I still remember times where I would go to the gym. I had a Planet Fitness membership at the time. Nothing wrong with that, but it was the cheapest one, and it's all I could afford. And it's up to it.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

There's nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_03 45:41

There's nothing wrong with that. It was $10 or maybe even cheaper. There's something, something really cheap, but that's all I could afford because that's all I had the money for. And I would just go in and I would be so scared because I'd be like, I think that thing is gonna kill me. I don't even know how to hook that thing, you know? And it's scary. But firstly, there are people out there, there's tons of resources to help you navigate these seemingly like monumental problems. But that fear of going in, and this is especially for women, is so daunting and can be the biggest limiting factor. And I help my patients all the time to be like, please stop thinking when other people care, but care. I will like send my patients little like Instagram DMs of like the viral memes that go around with like, you know, the girls that are doing like really funny bouncing balls and jumping jacks that it look like they're they're just being silly, that it'll show like a video being like nobody's watching you, nobody cares what you're doing at the gym. And I'm like, watch these things, like truly, nobody cares. Just go in there and feel happy and feel confident. That's step one. And when you change what you do, these conversations need to come back because you might be like, oh, I'm not a runner, but like, am I supposed to be doing some endurance-based work? I don't really like to do that X, Y, and Z thing. Do I really need to be thinking about that? Yeah, we need variety, we need specificity, we need to change what we do over time. And I want to acknowledge how scary that is. I want to acknowledge that it can be challenging. And I want to encourage people that you have tools to overcome this. So, this is our wonderful opportunity for you guys to tell us how do people work with you? How do people learn about your um your office space and your clinic and your gym that's also in Long Island? What do you guys offer and what's the best way to reach you?

SPEAKER_04 47:28

Yeah, so you can go to our website. It's our company is called Physical Equilibrium, but our website is P-H-Y-S-E-Q.com and has a lot of information on there of all of our different offerings and programs from personal training to Palawis to program design to coaching for travel on running, nutrition. Um, so you can see all of those things. And then our class is called Lift Club, and we have an intro class, intro to lift club in Manhattan a couple times a week. So you can see the schedule there to join a small group lifting class to learn how to lift properly and not injure yourself. Um, so that's that. And then, yes, on Long Island, we have a year-round facility there in East Hampton. In the summer, it's much busier and we offer sessions at your private residence or pretty much anywhere in the Hamptons from Memorial Day to Labor Day. So we have that. And um, Sarah, do you want to talk about the nutrition specifically? What you offer for nutrition services? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

So we have a couple of options. I myself like to do uh body composition tracking. So I have an in-body where I get someone's baseline muscle mass, fat mass, and I also do metabolic testing. So I get your exact resting metabolic rate. So we can get your literal exact calorie budget. But the hard part is teaching someone how to stay in their budget. It's it's a lot of behavior change and work. So if someone's not ready for that, we have we have another dietitian on staff who does more what's called, you know, medical nutrition therapy or nutrition counseling, where it's a slower approach, but there's a lot more feelings and behavior change involved. So someone who's kind of graduated from that and doesn't have many issues can go right to my methodology. So we have we have both. If we can give whatever someone needs.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

I love that. And I'm gonna drop your guys' information in the show notes as well. Um, for listeners, I encourage anyone who's listening to dive deep. There's a lot of resources, lots of things that you guys can um look up in these adjacent topics to better understand um the different options for moving your body in healthy ways to achieve all the things that you want. And um I'm excited for you guys to, you know, grow your brand, grow your business, do more great things. And hopefully we'll have all three of you back on the show to have a new fun topic in a future season.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Yeah, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_04 50:11

Thanks for having us. That was a fun discussion.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

That's good. It's very therapeutic, too. Need to get out, get that off my chest.

SPEAKER_03 50:18

Thank you all for tuning in and investing in yourself and your well-being. If you listened to the show today and gained anything out of it, share it far and wide. It means the world when you rate and review the show. Don't forget to use your exclusive 20% discount code FIT20 when you sign up for our signature course Master Your Public Floor, linked in the show notes. See you again next week with an exciting new guest and topic.