❓ When Is Training More Than Training?

What are we really doing here?

🎉 Happy Friday, Friends!

Throughout my years of personal training, I've learned a lot about what it actually means for a woman in peri/menopause to build strength. I've talked about the specific challenges we face as women who share a generation, such as...

➡️ Being discouraged against strength training because it doesn't fit gender norms to be strong
➡️ Having our bodies policed by loved ones and the media (hello, 90s and naughties...)
➡️ Being nudged into silence and tolerance in relationships, workplaces, as caregivers, and beyond
➡️ Dealing with economic uncertainty while navigating hormonal shifts, especially recently

These challenges are top of mind for me as a personal trainer because of how often they come up during sessions. Movement helps you process emotions in real time. Sometimes I see the links forming right in front of me as a client talks through their day-to-day in between sets.

What I've realized as I form one-on-one connections with clients is this:

Training fortifies the most smallest building block that makes up my community: the individual.

Showing someone a new, easier, or more expressive way to move directly nourishes the relationship they have with themselves.

You hear so much about how in order to relieve stress, process your day, and move trauma out of your system, you have to "go through the body." When I help my clients reinforce their movement practices, it has long-term effects that I notice over time.

➡️ It makes it easier to care for themselves outside the studio. I see clients relieve their pain long-term through a combination of physical therapy and training and have an easier time managing stress, prioritizing social activities, and learning new things.

➡️ Increased energy and psychological empowerment make it easier to show up for things like social activities, helping friends with child/pet care or life transitions, community events, and protests.

➡️ Strength makes it easier to complete daily tasks like bringing in groceries and pet supplies, cleaning, and cooking without losing steam.

Training, for me, is about reducing the amount of friction between you and what you're trying to do. Most of the folx in our community are trying to build something real and meaningful with each other. That's why I feel so strongly about the tie between fitness and community. Fitness is political. Community is political. I love bringing the two together in my studio.

With you as we develop strength in numbers,
Dana