392: 7 Lessons in 7 Years Of CrossFit

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 392.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode. 

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and I think this is going to be a, hopefully, a fun episode because I just hit my seven-year anniversary at my CrossFit box. And as I was looking back and thinking about the past seven years, I started realizing there was a lot that I had learned over that time. And I thought it would be fun to talk about some of those lessons and share them with you here on the podcast today. So if you like CrossFit, fantastic. It's going to be a great episode. If you hate CrossFit, it doesn't really matter because the lessons that we're going to be talking about are not CrossFit specific, but they're lessons that I've gleaned that have helped me in other areas of my life, that have helped me to develop, that have helped my body. And I want to share those with you today so that you can kind of help maybe hasten you learning some of those lessons. I always think, and one of the reasons I like listening to other people is because you know other people have experience, they learn lessons, and then I can listen to the lesson and sometimes learn it faster than that person did, right? Like, you know, it's like the other person went before you and they learned the lesson first and they went through all of the pain or the experience of learning the lesson and then they can just tell you about it and then you can kind of shortcut the lesson. So that's kind of what I'm hoping to do today for you is hopefully I share some of these lessons that I've learned and maybe can give you a little bit of a shortcut on learning the lessons yourself.

My Fitness “Eras” 02:19

So before we dive into the seven lessons that I've learned, I want to take just a moment to just talk a little bit about my like workout eras, like a little T-Swift reference, because I have kind of run the gamut in terms of what I've done for my workouts. I'm not going to tell my whole story, but if you've heard me talk about it before, I started in the weight room at age 14 when my mom took me into the YMCA, showed me the dumbbells, showed me the machines, and that kind of started my lifting journey. You know, I didn't lift consistently during high school, but I probably lifted more than most of my classmates in high school because my mom went to the gym a lot. It was kind of a family culture, I would say. I remember growing up and the YMCA would host like 5Ks or family fun exercise events. And because my mom was so, you know, integrated into the YMCA culture, she worked there forever, our family like always went to these events. And so I will say that growing up, fitness and working out was part of our family culture. And you can kind of see that in a lot of, I'm the oldest of seven, in a lot of my siblings, how we, most of us have gone on to create some sort of exercise routine, workout routine. Most of us lift weights. It just was kind of something we were raised as a culture. So anyway, that started early in my life around age 14. I lifted, you know, somewhat off and on throughout my high school years. And then transitioning into college, continued lifting. I remember I took a lifting class when I was in college and learned more about technique and how to perform things correctly. 

And then, you know, when I was getting into college, I kind of got more into running. That was my like running era. I had this bucket list item that I wanted to run a marathon and I did that. And funny thing about that experience was, first of all, my husband was supposed to run it with me. We were dating at the time, but then we got married and he was supposed to run this marathon with me, but he made it to about, in our training, he made it to about 17 miles and his knee just like wasn't having it. So I remember when I went on my 20 mile run before I ran my marathon, he rode his bike next to me. So he kind of like helped me with my training, but ultimately I ended up running that marathon on my own. And I remember before the marathon, I was reading, you know, back then it was like forums and blogs. This was 2005 when I ran my marathon. So, you know, social media wasn't really a thing back then. So I was reading on like blogs and things like that. And I heard people say over and over again, all these runners said over and over again, they're like, oh my gosh, you're going to run your first marathon and you're going to cross the finish line. And you are going to be like, when can I run the next one? Right? Like that hunger, that like excitement, it's just going to be like so fun. And I remember I crossed the finish line of my marathon and I was like, those people are wackadoodles. I never want to do that again. Like that was awful. I did not like it. I didn't like the training. I like, that was like a bucket list item that I cross off and I vowed I would never do it again. And I haven't, I've stayed true to my word. I've run multiple half marathons since then, but never a marathon. Like that was one and done.

So anyway, that was more of my running area. And then when I got into, I guess it was like the tail end of my college career, I got married. My husband and I moved to Pennsylvania for med school. And I did more like lifting and running during my, my pregnancy. My first pregnancy, had my baby and my first child. And that kind of transitioned me into a new era when I used to do like a lot of running and a lot of lifting at the med school gym, they didn't have childcare. And so, you know, I had this new baby and I needed this kind of like a new workout routine. And this was when my friend convinced me to join the Gold's gym that was nearby. Now, this was a big decision for me because I don't know if you know anything about med school, but you are very poor. I will say we were very poor in med school. Very, very poor, right? We're coming out of college. We don't have jobs. I did end up working as a nurse, but like that basically just covered our living expenses. And then we're taking on all this debt for my medical school. And you're just like, we were just like dirt poor. So Gold's gym was $30 a month. And I remember anguishing like over this $30 a month. Like that's how tight our budget was. It was like, I didn't feel like I could even find $30 a month, but ultimately I made the decision that like the $30 a month was, I was important enough to invest that into my sanity as a new mom and they had childcare. Like that was really important to me. So I started going to Gold's gym with my friend. They had childcare. Best thing I've ever done for myself, right? Like that $30 a month I would spend over and over and over and over again, because I needed something to keep me sane, to keep me healthy, to give me something to do, to give me a break from being a mom. And that was a really important pivotal point for me of making that decision.

Realizing the Limits of Group Fitness 08:40

Anyway, that started off my, I would say the next era of my fitness journey was group fitness. And I started out as a participant in group fitness, loved it. I had the Zumba class that I really loved. Again, it was so good for me to be able to, to get away. I could drop my baby off, have an hour to myself, move my body and you know, worth every penny that I spent on that. And then transitioned from being a group participant or group fitness participant to a group fitness instructor. And so I would say this is my like group fitness era. And that was about an eight-year-long era when I taught everything. Like I taught body combat, I taught body pump, I taught Zumba, I taught bar, I taught CX works. I like lots and lots of different styles and formats and classes. And I just really loved group fitness. And this really fit me during this era because this was my like also baby having era. This is when I was birthing all my babies. And so we started with one kid and then we moved to two and then we had three and then finally we had four. And during this whole time I'm teaching and the childcare was like essential for me. Right. It's like I had four kids. And so being able to take my four, like load up all four of my children and take them into the childcare and then be able to go and do my workout and teach and have a community and have people that were friends. And like, that was just one of the best things that I could do. I knew I wanted to work out and being, then I was getting paid to work out as well. It was like a win-win all the way around. So my group fitness era was like around an eight-year-long period of time as I had very young children and that worked really, really well for me. And then I got to the point where, and I've told this story before because this was around like the 2016 time when I started Biceps After Babies, where I just realized my body just always kind of looked the same and it didn't really look like I worked out and I wasn't really building a whole lot of muscle. And I realized that my nutrition played a huge role in that. And that's when I found macro counting and started counting macros and my body, like I lost a lot of fat. My body got a lot leaner. I was able to see a lot of the muscle, some of the muscle that I had built, but then I realized that I actually didn't have as much muscle as I thought I did. Right. Even though I had been teaching body pump for eight plus years, I didn't really have a whole lot of muscle because I wasn't doing progressive overload. I wasn't doing hypertrophy style training. 

Transition to Bodybuilding, Then Powerlifting 09:55

And so my next, uh, era after group fitness was transitioning more into a bodybuilding style of training. I worked on hypertrophy. I worked on, um, doing my own workouts outside of the group fitness classroom. And that was like about maybe about a year long where I just kind of worked on building an appreciable amount of muscle with my workouts. And then also supporting that with, you know, the new nutrition knowledge I had gained from macros. And then I kind of got tired with like aesthetics and training for aesthetics. And I decided that I didn't want to just look strong. Like I didn't want to just build muscle. I actually wanted to be strong. And so I did a three-year stint of powerlifting and I hired a coach, a powerlifting coach. I competed in powerlifting competition and you know, I like squat benched and deadlift my little eyes out because that's what you do in powerlifting is like the big three. Oh, and overhead press. Those were like squat bench deadlift, overhead press, like all the time. That's what you're doing. That's what you're getting really good at. And I set some pretty big goals in powerlifting was able to achieve most of them. I wanted to get above a 300 pound deadlift. And I hit 303 in a comp. I wanted to be able to bench my body weight and I was able to bench over my body weight. I think my body weight at the time was like 140 and my top bench was like 152 or something like that. So hit that goal. The only place that I didn't really make as much progress in is my squat. My squat is always my like lagging numbers. I think my max squat was like 232 or something like that. And I, I had ideas for getting more than that, but my body just wasn't having it. So powerlifting was really fun. I got really strong, got really good at technique, you know, having a coach and have eyes on me was really helpful for really dialing my technique in the big four or the big three lifts. Um, and so that was about a three year stint. And then I got to the point where I was tired of working out alone. Most of my training when powerlifting was done at our home gym, because we had, you know, a rack and a barbell and all those things. So I could do all my training at my home gym. And I got, two things happened. I got tired of working out by myself and I got tired of doing the big three. It's like, oh my gosh, we're squatting again. We're benching again. We're dead lifting again. I was like, I needed some variety. And so my friends, Heidi and Nat from Butter Your Macros, a lot of you guys know them. They, I had just moved to California from North Carolina and they said, Hey, you should come to our CrossFit box. And I kept putting them of because, and I knew I was going to like it, but I wasn't really ready to quite make that transition. But in the fall, like my kids went back to school. So in the fall of 2018, I finally was like, okay, let's do it. Let's, um, let me, let me try this CrossFit thing. And I fell in love. Like I kind of knew I would, it had like so many of the elements of the things I was looking for. It had community, it had pushing yourself hard, it had lifting, it had cardio, it had competition. And I fell in love and it's been now seven years that I've been going to my, my CrossFit box. And the last year and a half, I would say I've been doing more of a hybrid approach where I do my own lifting on the side, you know, three to four days a week. And then I'll hop into class, you know, one to two days a week. So, you know, I've kind of pulled back from doing just, just CrossFit for, but for probably about five plus years, five and a half years, I was, that was what I was doing. It was like, I just did CrossFit class for that period of time. So that's a really long, um, storytelling process to kind of recap the different workout eras. Um, but now that brings us up to today where, you know, I'm celebrating seven years of, of CrossFit. And I kind of want to talk about some of the things that I've learned along the way.

Age Changes Things 13:54

All right, so let's jump in. The first thing that I have learned, and this is a little bit humbling, uh, I'll say what it is and then I'll say why it's humbling. So the first thing that I have learned is that age changes things. And that is probably a dumb moment, especially if you're someone who's older. But I will tell you the reason that this is humbling is because I remember being in my twenties and my like early thirties and kind of like scoffing at like, do you really need to warm up? Like, you just go do it. Like, like it's hard. And being like, warmups are like, you don't need to warm up. Like, just, just go like do a couple of squats and then like load a heavy bar and let's go. I remember that. And I laugh at that younger version of myself because here I am at 41 and it is different. Um, I started CrossFit at 34. So I already was like a little bit older, right? Like, um, I wasn't in my twenties. I was already a little bit older, but the difference between 34 and 41 is significant. Like things change. I, warmups are so much more important for me now. Like I, I need to warm up. My body is not as limber as it used to be. My body needs movement. I need to stretch. I need to, um, you know, move my body in the movement patterns before I start loading out the weight. And that's something that I could get away with when I was younger. And I've just, man, I can't get away with it anymore. Like warming up is so important. 

Um, I've also realized I have to manage my intensity more than I used to. Like I used to be able to show up at the box and I would work out Monday through Friday and I would go hard every single workout. I would not hold back at all. And I used to be like, my body used to be able to tolerate. Now I would get sore, right? I would get sore. And I'm not saying that like, I didn't, I didn't feel beat up, but I could like manage it. I can't manage it anymore. I can't like doing five days of CrossFit in a row. Um, I think I, my body just can't recover the way it used to be able to recover. So I have to manage my intensity a little bit and I have to manage my volume a little bit more. So the last couple of years, you know, being able to pull back and do some of my own lifting and then hopping into a class, you know, once or twice a week is a way that I'm able to manage my volume. I'm still able to do the fun workouts and push myself and do the Metcons and things like that and have the community, but I just, I can't do the volume that I used to be able to do when I was younger. And that's a little bit humbling. And I'm sure somebody who's listening to this in their fifties and sixties and seventies is like, Oh, just wait. It, you know, that, that continues. Um, I believe it. I believe it now. And I, you know, I chuckle a little bit at my younger self at some of the things that I thought about aging and that it wasn't going to catch up with me. And that's, that's funny because it does, it catches up with all of us. So that's number one. 

Failing Doesn't Kill You. Skill Development in CrossFit 16:40

Okay. Lesson number two is that failing doesn't kill you. I, one of the things that I love about CrossFit is that there is so much variety. And one of the things that I was really excited about coming from the world of powerlifting, where you do four things, you squat, bench, deadlift, overhead, press over and over and over and over, like four things. And you get really good at four things. I was really excited. Now that I had built a whole bunch of strength, doing those four things of being able to take that strength and then play around with it. And that's what CrossFit has been a lot of for me is like, okay, let's play with it now. Now that you have built a lot of upper body strength, let's play around with bar muscle ups. Let's play around with handstand walks. Let's play around with, um, you know, handstand pushups. So it's like you built the upper body strength, but now how can we like, what fun things can we do with that? Um, so there's, if you know anything about CrossFit, there is a lot of skills and they have like, they kind of rank them in like lower skills and then like higher skills. So you, you can go as high as you want with the skills training. And there's always modifications that people can do, but like some of the really high skill work movements in CrossFit are things like bar muscle ups where you're basically like swinging your body up over the bar, um, ring muscle up, same thing, but with rings, uh, handstand pushups where you're upside down in a handstand and you're pushing, you know, your body up and down.

Handstand walks where you are literally like walking on your freestyle hand walking or walking on your hands, um, forward. Um, those are some of like the more technical higher skill movements. And then obviously there's modifications of that. Like not everybody can do those movements, but having those as like goals was really fun for me. It took me a long time to get my first bar muscle up, but like, that was so exciting when I got it. It took me a long time to be able to do handstand walks, but that was so exciting when I got it. But this lesson is that CrossFit taught me a lot about failing because there are still movements I cannot do. I have never done a ring muscle up. I can do bar muscle ups, but not ring muscle ups. Uh, I still can like maybe sometimes do a strict handstand pushup, but I definitely can't do them on a regular basis. And I haven't tried one for a really long time, but like for both of those, I tried for a long time. I worked at it. I, you know, I wanted to get my first handstand pushups. And so I put effort into it and I created a plan and I worked through that plan and I didn't ever get it and I'm okay and I'm still here and I will be just fine. And I think that that, that ability to be able to go after a goal and fail at it and realize that you're going to be fine is actually really important and really valuable.

I was just having a conversation the other day with my daughter who is at a way at college and she's trying to make some decisions about what she wants to do with her life and what she wants to invest her time into. And she, she has something that she would like to do. And I was talking to her about it and I could tell, and we kind of ascertained that like one of her fears was if she tried this thing, she might not be as good at it as she thinks she is right now. She has a self-concept of I'm good at this thing. And if I, but if I try to do it in this other context and I fail, then like my illusion, the illusion that I'm good at it is broken. And I was making the point to her that if we build our confidence on the fact that things are always going to work out the way we want them to work out, that is a sandy foundation to build on. I can't promise her that if she goes and tries to do this thing or attempts it, that it's going to, that she's going to, it's going to be successful. I can't, we can't promise her that. So you cannot build your confidence on the fact that things are always going to work out for you. What I encouraged her to build her confidence on is her ability to be okay either way. So you, I can't guarantee that you're going to be successful at this thing that you're going to try. But what we can start to rely on is the fact that you will be okay even if it doesn't. 

And that is powerful. When I can rely on my ability to be able to navigate whatever situation comes up, that's where true confidence is built. A lot of people try to build confidence by controlling the outcome, controlling their external environment. And you can't ever do that. She may try this thing and she may fail. I tried to get a handstand pushup and I failed. But why am I okay with that? Because I've, I can rely on my ability to be okay in the face of failure. I'm just as worthy. I'm just as okay today, not having done a handstand pushup as I would be having done a handstand pushup. And that becomes a really strong foundation to be able to work from is, is, you know, I've always been okay. I've always, I will always be okay. And so I'm going to go out and I'm going to chase this thing and who knows, maybe I'll fail at it. There's been plenty of things that I've failed at, but I've been able to build my confidence and my resilience in my ability to handle failure. And I think that's really, really important. 

Competition Can Be Positive 21:55

Okay. Number three, the third lesson I've learned is, is maybe a little bit about my personality, but for me, for me, competition is very positive. I, I like competition. I respond well to competition. It, I think sometimes competition can, obviously competition can go to a negative place. And if we're always comparing against other people and making ourselves feel bad, that's probably not a healthy thing to do. And, and at the same time, there can be excitement and competition can push you. And so I think, you know, competition isn't good or bad. Comparing isn't good or bad. I actually think that's really important because a lot of times I think we say, oh, I shouldn't compare. Comparing isn't good or bad. What we got to pay attention to is your experience in that comparison, right? Are you making yourself feel good because you're better than someone else? It's probably not a healthy thing. Or are you making yourself feel bad because you're worse than someone else? Also not a healthy thing. So like comparison, when it makes you feel better or worse about yourself is probably not healthy. Comparison, when it helps you to do your best, that's a different frame. And what I've learned is that, and I, listen, I've fallen into both of those. I've fallen into like, oh, I feel like so superior because I won. And I feel like awful because I lost, right? I've fallen into that. And that's, that's the danger with comparison. You got to be careful about that. But there is another way to experience it, which is that competition helps me to do my best. And that's internally focused, right? That's focused on me, not on what I'm comparing against. And that's what I've learned is comparison for me is, it can be a really positive thing and I really enjoy it. It helps me push harder. It helps me to perform better. It helps me to perform at my best. And I mean, obviously CrossFit has a lot of competition. Every time you're doing a WOD, you get some sort of score. And then we post that score on the whiteboard. And, um, you know, every year you're doing the CrossFit Open and you get a score and you're able to compare where you stack up against, you know, the entire field. And, uh, that's, to me, that's really motivating. Again, not to like prove that I'm better than somebody or worse than somebody else, but to allow me to do my best. And that's been something that's fun that I've realized. 

You Cannot Complain About the Work You Aren’t Willing to Do 24:25

Okay. Number four, you cannot complain about the work that you're not willing to do. So there are plenty of things that I want to get better at and that I've worked to get better at. I worked for a long time to get my first bar muscle up. I worked for a long time to try and get my first handstand pushup. Didn't really ever, didn't really ever get there. Um, I worked for a long time to get string, um, double unders together, right? So these are things that I decided were important to me and that I wanted to work for, and that I put an effort to get better at. And then there are things that like, I just wish I was better at. Like, I wish, I wish I could squat more. Like I wish my squats were, I could squat heavier, but I don't actually squat a whole ton. I didn't squat a whole ton like during CrossFit. And even in my own training, like I don't squat that much and I can't get mad that I'm not great at squatting or I can't squat as much as I used to because I don't do it. And I think this may seem again, like a dumb moment, but I think a lot of times we kind of get upset or complain, or we are frustrated by our inability to be able to do something. But then we get really honest with ourselves. It's like, what have you done to make that happen? Did you just like want it to happen? You just like hoped it would happen and then it didn't and you got mad? Or like, like we actually, if you want something to change, you actually have to put effort in to change it. And so the thing with, and the reason this relates to CrossFit is like, there's so many movements that you do in CrossFit. Like in powerlifting, there's three lifts. In CrossFit, there's probably, I mean with variations, like a hundred things that we do. And so, and that's probably, that's kind of the allure of CrossFit is like this idea that you're training for the whatever comes, whatever happens. And, and so there's just lots and lots of movements. And so like you literally cannot be awesome and the best and the top at every single movement. You know, especially when we take into account body size, like for example, somebody who is bigger and taller, you may be awesome on the machines, right? You're good on the rower, you get on the bike, you can like crank on it and you can move fast. But someone who is bigger and heavier and does well on the bike is probably going to do less well on things like bar muscle ups because people who are lighter have an easier time with doing bar muscle ups. And so, you know, CrossFit, that's like the whole stick with CrossFit is, is you're going to be good at some movements and not as good as others. And they all kind of balance each other out.

So anyway, you're never going to be able to be good at everything in CrossFit. Like nobody is good at everything. The elites are very good at most of it, but even they have their holes. And so, um, and you can't work on it all at the same time, right? I can't say, I want to be good at front squatting and, um, handstand pushups and handstand walks and bar muscle ups. And I want to press heavy and I want to have a, you know, cleans and I want to be able to row fast and whatever, right? Like you, it's, it's way too many things to always be working on. And so CrossFit for me has allowed me to be really specific with like, I want to get better at this. I'm going to create a plan to get better at this. And I'm going to kind of let some of the other stuff not be my focus for right now. And I can't complain if I'm not great at it, because that's not what I'm focusing on right now. And I think this idea applies to a lot of areas of our life. It's like, are you complaining about things that you weren't willing to put the work in for? And I think if we're really honest, sometimes we do that because it feels like I should be able to be better at this. Well, why? Like have you actually put the work in to be better at it? 

Community Changes the Game 28:07

Okay. Number five, community changes the game for me. I mean, everyone's different, but the difference in like working out, and I do sometimes work out, we have a gym and outside of our house in a shed. And I will oftentimes like on the weekends and stuff, I will go and lift out there by myself, but I vastly prefer to be surrounded by people. And so even though I'm only hopping into class one to two times a week, I lift at my CrossFit box every day. So I go to my CrossFit box every day. I just go to the side and do my own training. And then, like I said, a couple of times a week, I'll jump into class and do it with class. And I prefer that. I prefer to be surrounded by people. I prefer to have a community. I've met so many friends there. It's become people that I know. And I just, for me, being around other people who want to push themselves, who want to get better, who want to try new things, who want to compete, who want to do all of those things, surrounding myself with them, it's so beneficial for me. And I was really missing that in the three years that I did power lifting of having a community that I was able to do it with. And there are power lifting gyms, which I think I probably would have benefited from, it's like going to a power lifting gym. But a lot of my power lifting time was over the COVID. So we didn't have access to outside gyms. So that obviously tainted my experience. But for me, community changes the game. And I love my CrossFit community. I love the people that I've met. And it has formed a really great group of people that I just love hanging out with. 

Your Body Adapts to What You Do Most Frequently 29:51

Number six, our bodies adapt to what you do most frequently. One of the things that I noticed coming from power lifting into CrossFit was how the two different modalities really changed my body. I have actually lost a lot of muscle mass going from power lifting into CrossFit, specifically in my legs. Like I look back on my power lifting days and my photos from my power lifting days, and my legs had a lot more muscle mass on them. And CrossFit just has a lot more cardio and my body doesn't hang on to muscle mass as great when I am including a ton of cardio. And so that's not bad or wrong or anything. It's been interesting to me to be able to observe how my body has responded to different training styles and different training modalities. When I do a lot of cardio, I lose muscle mass and CrossFit has a lot of cardio. So I look at my upper body and really specifically my lower body, and I had a lot more muscle mass during doing power lifting. So it's easy to be like, why don't you go back to power lifting? Well, because the maximum muscle mass isn't the only factor that I'm considering. I want something that I enjoy, that I look forward to, that I want to do. And so I'm balancing those things. I'm like, yes, I want muscle mass. Muscle mass is important for aging. It's important for overall health. It is important, but I'm not willing to place it as the most important thing if I don't like what I'm doing. Does that make sense? I built a lot of muscle mass. I was really strong doing power lifting, but I was getting to the point where I didn't like it. I didn't want to do it. And that tells me something needs to change. And so there's different values that I have. Yes, building muscle is one of my values, but it is not the most important value. It's also really important to me to like what I'm doing. It's important to me to have a community when I'm doing it. It's important for me to feel challenged, to enjoy the process. And I wasn't doing that anymore with power lifting. And so, yes, I have lost muscle mass going to CrossFit, different modalities, different styles of training. I'm not lifting as heavy as I used to lift. So it all makes sense. But it's just been interesting to watch and notice how my body responds to different training styles. And then again, having that realization of like, sometimes we make things the most important. In our mind, we make things the most important that aren't actually the most important, right? Like building muscle is important to me. It is not the most important thing. If it was the most important thing, then I wouldn't mind that I don't really want to do it and that it's not fun and that I don't have a community and whatever, right? And I would just do it because that was the most important thing. It is an important thing to me, but there are other important factors that we always need to balance.

And I hear this a lot with people like, actually, I just saw a woman post this in our MACROS 101 group and she was saying, I'm in my 50s and everybody says, everybody says that I'm not supposed to do zone two cardio. I'm supposed to be doing HIIT. But like, I really like zone two cardio. What do I do? And I think that, like, again, I understand where people are coming from of like wanting to have optimal training. But that, like, when that is the only thing that we're worried about, we're not, we don't focus on longevity and enjoyment and enjoyment, increasing longevity. Like I don't want to just be jacked today. I want to be able to maintain that muscle mass long-term. And if I'm trying to force myself into something I don't want to do to force myself into a workout that I'm not enjoying and pushing myself back into power lifting, because that was when I had the most muscle mass. Well, I'm not going to stick with it. Like I just won't, or I won't enjoy it. And I'm just not at the point in my life where I want optimal so bad that I'm willing to not enjoy it. Right. I don't want to live my life. I want to enjoy exercise. I want to enjoy moving my body. And so yeah, maybe what I'm doing is something that is less optimal for muscle mass, maybe, but I enjoy it. And to me that matters a ton. 

Progress Isn’t Linear 34:00

Okay. Last one. Progress isn't linear. Oh boy. I mean, it just kind of like circles back around to the first lesson I've learned about age, but I have learned that unfortunately you don't just keep getting better. And this has been humbling for me because with, you know, now that I've been at CrossFit seven years, you track your scores in, we have a program called Wattify. And so I can look back, especially in CrossFit, you have, obviously you have your lifts like max squat, max bench, max clean, max snatch, like those things. Right. So you have your PRs with your lifts, but then we also have what are called benchmark workouts. So these are, they're usually named workouts like Annie or Grace and they're workouts that we like test ourselves on. Right. So it's like the same workout and you can do it as a benchmark, as like a test of your fitness at that point in time. And so we will often do these benchmark workouts, you know, over the years and you lock in your score, right? You put in your score. So I know the last time I did Grace, I got this time. And so then, you know, a year later or whatever, we can do Grace again and we can compare your score this time to your score last time and kind of see, has your fitness improved? Are you more physically fit than you were prior when you did that? And, you know, it would be really great if that just always got better. If you always like progress and my Grace time, every time I did it was always a little bit better because I was always getting a little bit fitter. And that just isn't the case, especially when you're doing CrossFit and you're doing a whole lot of different modalities. Oftentimes I will, especially for like, I'll go back and I'll have a score in 2019 and we'll do a benchmark workout now. And I won't, I won't beat that score. I won't even get like with close to that score. I am physically less fit today than I was back in 2019. And you know, age has something to do with that for sure. But the progress is not always linear. Like you're not always going to always get better and always improve. And that's where it kind of, we kind of go back to what I was saying earlier, where it's like, we can't, we can't focus on everything all the time. We have to take areas and say, this is my focus now. And I'm willing to kind of let some of the other stuff go because this is my focus. 

And I think that applies to life in a lot of ways. You can't always be working on everything in your life. So it's like, what we do is we take a period of time and we'd say, I'm really focused on, you know, getting this at work, doing better at work or whatever, or becoming a better parent or becoming a better spouse, or, you know, I have health and fitness goals. And I'm not saying you can't have multiple goals in multiple areas of your life, but if you have intense goals in all areas of your life, simultaneously, you're going to go mad. It just like, doesn't work. You can't actually focus your attention. So, um, progress isn't linear. It won't be linear. And that doesn't mean anything's going wrong. It doesn't mean that because my grace time now is slower than it was a couple of years ago that anything's going wrong. It is information. It is data. I always talk to my MACROS 101 clients about this. Like it's just information. It's just data for me. If it's making me feel a certain way, that's because of my interpretation of it. And that's my work that I get to do. I can just look at that and say, huh, my grace time is a minute slower than it used to be. That is information. That is feedback. Do I want to change that? If I wanted to change it, I'm sure I could put in the effort. I'm sure I could like do grace every week for the next eight weeks. And I bet your bottoms, I would be able to beat that time. But again, that goes back to, I can't complain about the work I'm not willing to do. So I'm just like willing to like let it go. It's okay. It doesn't mean anything about me. I have built my confidence in like, I'm going to be okay regardless of what happens because my worth is not defined by a score on the whiteboard. And that's a really important place to be able to be. 

Recap and Final Reflections 37:59

Okay. So those seven lessons, number one, age changes things. Shocker. Number two, failing doesn't kill you. Number three, competition for me is positive. Number four, you can't complain about the work you're not willing to do. Number five, community changes the game. Number six, our bodies adapt to what we do most frequently. And number seven, progress isn't linear. 

I hope that this has been a fun episode. I hope that you've taken away some little tidbits from what I shared today and that you can start to apply those things to your own life. I think sometimes it's really easy to get into the habit of listening to podcasts and nodding and saying, yeah, that makes total sense. And then going about your day and nothing changing. So what were, what hit you? What stood out to you? And is there a place that maybe in your life you're realizing you're not maybe applying that, or there's something that could change for you? And can you go out now and have this episode spark something to be different? Something to change moving forward.

If you have something that hit you or touched you, or you thought during this episode, and that was an aha for you, I would love it if you DM that to me. I love hearing your guys' aha moments about the podcast, how it's applied to your life, what you realized as you were listening to this episode. That's really, really fun for me to be able to connect with you in the DMs. So send me a DM on Facebook or on Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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