Rachel Noel was recently on the podcast. She’s a coach at CrossFit 801, and this July she’ll step onto the floor at the 20th anniversary CrossFit Games as a first-time qualifier. A point that really got me from our conversation isn’t the Games. It’s the eight years that got her there, most of them spent training alone.

Listen to the episode here.

Here’s what happened:

Rachel started CrossFit with a group of friends. Over the years, people moved, priorities shifted, life happened to everyone else the way it happens to… everyone. Eventually she was the only one left from her original crew but she was still showing up, still doing the work even with no one there to notice if she didn’t.

She didn’t set out to qualify for the games, at first. Her goal was to try her best. “I knew it was probably unattainable, honestly,” she told me. “It was always like, I’m gonna try my best, and if it doesn’t happen, I can say that I gave it my all.”

Then we talked about discipline: “If I don’t want to do it, I don’t have to do it. No one’s making me. I’m choosing to do this myself.”

No coach standing over her. No training partner to disappoint. No one keeping score, but her. And somehow that’s exactly what made eight years of consistency possible.

The Proof Is in the Repetition

Rachel’s Games qualification wasn’t motivation. IT was habit. Habits built through consistency, habitsmthat run regardless of how you feel that day.

“There are days where I’m super tired, I just don’t want to go,” she said. “But you have that habit to fall back on, and you just kind of turn your brain off, and you can do it.”

Psychologist Wendy Wood’s research on habit formation backs this up: about 43% of daily behavior runs on automatic cues rather than conscious willpower, which is why habits outlast motivation. Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are unreliable. Feelings show up when it’s convenient and disappear when you need them, or not. A habit doesn’t ask how you feel. It just runs.

This is also why Rachel doesn’t buy into all-or-nothing thinking. “It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing,” she told me. “You can keep going even if you mess up.” One missed workout, one bad week, doesn’t erase the habit underneath it.

The Ritual

Rachel’s ritual is small, and may say hard to sustain: showing up to train by herself, day after day, year after year, with nobody around. That is not easy.

Coaching is where her ritual pays it forward. Every athlete she works with at CrossFit 801 gets a coach who has personally logged years of proof that discipline outlasts feeling ready and she brings that standard to how she trains others.

Three years ago, Rachel separated her AC joint. Four weeks in a sling, then a month rebuilding strength and range of motion. It left a lasting gap in one of her weaker movements: strict handstand push-ups. That gap kept her out of semifinals last year. So she did what eight years of habit had trained her to do: rebuilt it, slowly, with no shortcuts. “You never regret working hard at something,: she said.

Rachel’s muscle moment goes back further than CrossFit, to her years playing goalie in college soccer. “It’s really glamorized, and it actually kind of sucks,” she said, laughing. “I’m glad I did it, and I wouldn’t change it, but it was really hard going through it.”

What got her through it wasn’t the outcome. It was outworking the room. “Working harder than everyone else was something I leaned on, and it gave me confidence,” she told me. “You don’t always get exactly what you want, but you never regret working hard at something.”

The Science Is Simple

Habits form through repetition, not intensity. Every time Rachel showed up on a day she didn’t want to, she wasn’t just finishing a workout, she was reinforcing a behavior loop that no longer required her to feel ready. That’s how the nervous system works: the more automatic a behavior becomes, the less it depends on willpower, and the more you follow through on the days there is no motivation.

Now, you put it into practice.

You don’t need a Games qualification on the line to use this. Pick one thing you keep waiting to feel motivated for: a workout, a hard conversation, a project you’ve been circling. Don’t wait for the feeling, instead build the smallest version of a habit around it: same time, same place every time, whether you feel like it or not.

Put the guardrails in place so you don’t have to think about it. Set the calendar reminders, carry your book, your journal, your workout program - whatever it is, have it with you so you can build the habit. Keep doing it until it just happens, without you thinking about it. Let your nervous system do what it’s built to do: turn a decision into a habit, and a turn a habit into proof.

Over time, you’ll notice you don’t need anyone watching to know you did the work. You’ll have the evidence yourself.

Strength is a life strategy.

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In this episode, Rachel tells the story of the day she found out she’d qualified for her first CrossFit Games. The people around her were her besties and her family, all cheering for her, and ready to celebrate. Then she got back to the gym, and it was back to training alone (for the most part).

At first, Rachel didn’t set out to qualify for The Games. Her only goal was to try her best. “I knew it was probably unattainable, honestly,” she told me. “It was always like, I’m gonna try my best, and if it doesn’t happen, I can say that I gave it my all.”

Her process: show up regardless of how she feels that day (habit, not motivation), trust that consistency beats intensity, and let go of the all-or-nothing thinking that kills most people’s progress before it starts. “You can keep going even if you mess up,” a line that applies to a missed lift or mistake in a workout, as it does to anything else.

That same mindset shows up in how she coaches. Every athlete she works with gets the version of Rachel that spent years proving to herself, alone, that discipline outlasts feeling ready.

Her experience is a core muscle moment belief: confidence isn’t something someone hands you. It’s something you build in reps when nobody’s watching.

In this conversation, Rachel and I chat about:

• The real difference between motivation and habit

• Why “you can keep going even if you mess up” beats all-or-nothing thinking

• How coaching other people makes her a better athlete

• What confidence looks like when you’re alone

On the personal side, we get into her less than glamorous years playing goalie in college soccer and why working harder than everyone else, even when the outcome wasn’t guaranteed, became the thing - the habit - she leans on today.

Rachel steps onto the floor at the 20th anniversary CrossFit Games in July 2026. Whatever happens there, the real work already happened — quietly, alone, on a few thousand normal afternoons very few saw.

Listen to the full episode now.

ABOUT RACHEL
Rachel Noel is a coach at CrossFit 801in Utah, and a first-time qualifier for the 2026 CrossFit Games. She’s been training in CrossFit for eight years, most of them spent training alone after the friends she started with moved on. Before CrossFit, she played goalie in college soccer, an experience she credits with teaching her that working hard has a value that outlasts the outcome. She brings that same philosophy into how she coaches: consistency over intensity, habit over motivation, and confidence built through repetition.

GET IN TOUCH WITH RACHEL

• Instagram: @RachelKNoel

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When Laura caught herself backing down from a weight she knew she could lift, something clicked.

She was standing at the leg press machine, mid-warmup. Her notes from the week before said: 45-pound plates. But her brain was elsewhere; on a business framework she was terrified to launch. So her brain did what scared nervous systems do: it talked her down. 10 pound plates, maybe 35s, anything but the 45s.

She stopped at this realization and asked herself the following question: If fear can cross over from business into the gym, doesn’t that mean confidence can cross over the other way?

She chose self-trust and followed her notes from the week before, and loaded the 45s anyway. Fear be damned. She did her set and hours later, on a call she talked about that same scary business project without a shred of fear.

“That’s when I realized compartmentalized confidence isn’t a thing,” she told me.

She’s right. Your nervous system doesn’t have separate channels for “gym fear” and “life fear.” If you train one, you train the other.

The Evidence Lives in Your Body

Laura started where a lot of women do: thinking strength was about looking a certain way.

Then she got her first pull-up.

It wasn’t the pull-up itself. It was what being able to do the pull-up proved to her: I can do something I didn’t think I could do. I’m stronger than I thought.

When that happens, you start to collect facts and for Laura, she could now point to her body as proof.

This is self-efficacy in action. Psychologist Albert Bandura defined self-efficacy theory as the term for “I actually believe I can do hard things.”

Every time you build muscle, you’re writing a story into your nervous system: I said I could do this. I did it. The evidence is here.

That evidence follows you through life. Into the boardroom, the pitch meeting, the moment where fear tries to convince you you’re smaller than you actually are.

This is why I say: Trade Skinny for Strong. Not because muscle looks a certain way. Because muscle is proof. It’s confidence you can point to.

The Ritual

Laura is a competitive Olympic weightlifter. Before every meet, she does the same thing: finds a quiet space, puts a four-minute timer on, and breathes.

This doesn’t make the nerves go away, it give her the opportunity to sit with them without pressure.

And it expands her nervous system’s capacity to hold more than just fear. “I feel the nerves. And I’m still here. And I’m still capable,” is the mindset she works with.

This skill transfers: Notice the fear, name it, do the thing anyway.
The same thing she did with her leg press, different environment.

It’s a trained response. Your nervous system doesn’t know where this ritual is taking place; a competition or a business meeting. It just knows you’ve practiced it before, and it knows that you are settling it down to step into your confidence.

Expansion of Self-Expression

At 26, Laura did a boudoir shoot. She posed with a tire in a gym, refusing to be anything but fierce. No softness. All strength.

For her fortieth birthday, she did another one. This time, looking at the photos, she saw the same fierceness, and a softness she’d never let herself have. “I’ve expanded my capacity to allow softness,” she proclaimed with pride.

That’s what happens when you train your nervous system properly. You get more capable of holding what you think was, and what you think is. The layers of being human.

You can be fierce and soft. Confident and still learning. Strong and able to rest.

The Science Is Simple

Your nervous system learns through repetition. When you approach a weight you’re uncertain about and do it anyway, you’re building neural pathways. Those pathways don’t have a “gym only” sign on them. It’s applicable to literally any part of your life!

When you do this, you are teaching your brain to recognize fear without being controlled by it. Helping you form a meaningful response to how you act when confronted with uncertainty.

It transfers because fear is fear.

When you find your brain asking “can you do this?”. No matter what it is, when you know what you can do in the gym, you can answer confidently with a big, Fuck Yes.

Put it into practice.

Find something that scares you physically. Since we’re here at Muscle Moments, I’d like to encourage you to pick up a heavier weight that you’re used to. Or, give a new movement or a longer distance a try. Pick something at the edge of your capacity. Don’t be reckless, be genuinely curious if it’s something you are capable of.

Then show up and do it. Repeatedly.

Let your nervous system practice the skill of approaching something uncertain and proving to itself that it’s capable.

This is the work. Not complicated. Just consistent.

Every time you do it, you’re writing evidence into your body. And that evidence travels everywhere with you, as confidence.

Over time, you will see that what you are learning through each challenge is your ability to trust yourself first, and do whatever it is that scares you, anyway.

Build proof of your capacity. Let your nervous system learn what you’re really capable of.

Then watch what changes.

Strength is a life strategy.

Reminder: The first five episodes of Muscle Moments and all companion content is available for free. After, all podcast episodes will remain free and other content will be made available to paid subscribers who make this work possible.

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In this episode, Laura tells the story of the day fear showed up somewhere it wasn’t invited: her sacred gym time. Mid-warmup on her leg press — a machine she’s used every week for years — she caught herself talking herself down from her usual weight because of something scary happening in her business.

Thank goodness she wrote herself a note in her training journal the week before reminding herself she needed “to go heavier next time”. In that movement she chose to trust last-week-Laura and ignore the unease she was feeling. She’s done this enough to know what she’s capable of.

Her process: name what she was feeling (fear), load the bar as she had noted (more weight with confidence), execute at a high level (mechanical tension and control to complete the set).

Later that same day she talked about the scary business project, without fear. All born from a place of self-trust she created for herself in the gym.

Her experience is a core muscle moment belief: what you practice under the bar, you can practice everywhere.

In this conversation, Laura and I chat about:

• Why “compartmentalized confidence” isn’t a thing

• How to tell the difference between fear and being under-warmed-up

• What it looks like to stop being the bottleneck in your own life or business

• Laura’s ritual for walking onto a competition platform without losing her nerve.

All things she practices in her life.

On the personal side, we talk about the boudoir photoshoot she gave herself for her 40th birthday, and why it hit different than the one she did at 26. That grown-ass-woman confidence.

Laura’s experience in the gym; the sense of empowerment, the confidence in knowing what she’s capable of has bled into every part of her life. She actively chooses to use the gym to learn how she can show up and perform better each day. By the end of this episode, you’ll understand why and get some practical tips on how.

Listen to the full episode now.

ABOUT LAURA
Laura Dionisio spent 18 years as an aerospace systems engineer before founding Lead Intact®, where she works with high-achieving founders who’ve scaled to high six and seven figures and quietly run everything themselves. She helps them stop being the bottleneck in their own business by building operational structure that fits the person, not just the company.

She’s been training seriously since 2010, with roots in CrossFit and competitive Olympic weightlifting. She credits the gym with teaching her most of what she knows about fear, progress, and what it actually means to trust yourself under pressure — and she brings that same philosophy to how she works with founders. She treats the gym as a lab for discomfort, knowing firsthand that the confidence you build in one place transfers everywhere else.

Laura is the host of The Pivot Point Podcast and stays most active on Instagram @laura.m.dionisio.

GET IN TOUCH WITH LAURA
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/laura-dionisio
Instagram: @laura.m.dionisio
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lauramae.d

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I’ve worked with clients whose own body weight was heavy for them. I’ve seen people new to barbell movements struggle with their first squat, even though their dumbbell squats were strong. It was heavy for them. I’ve also seen clients, and myself, load a bar to max effort weight that looked smooth and it still felt heavy AF.

Completely different experiences. All real. All valid. All heavy.

If you’ve been waiting to “lift heavy” until you can move a specific number, I’ve got good news: you’re already qualified.

Heavy isn’t a finish line. It’s a relationship between you and the weight, today, right now. And like any relationship, it keeps changing.

What “Heavy” Means for a Workout

Heavy is relative intensity. It’s not about the absolute load. It’s how close that load pushes you against what you’re capable of, right now.

Here’s how I coach it: if your goal is to build muscle, growth comes through heavy compound movements, think 5 sets of 5 at a weight that feels heavy for you. This is where you build base strength and work capacity in the large muscle groups, which lets you handle more down the line.

The workout doesn’t end with the heavy compound lifts. Next come accessories, bodybuilding movements like rows, curls, RDLs, and pull-ups, in higher rep ranges, building the supporting muscles and strengthening your joints.

Compound movements and accessories together make a full training session. One is not better than the other; both are necessary. If you don’t have an hour for both, split them: big muscle groups one day, accessories the next.

In the end, muscle grows because of mechanical tension, applied through repeated and progressively increased weight over time. That’s it. Something is better than nothing, and something heavy, done with strong form, is best.

Everything else (rep schemes, tempo, exercise selection) is the delivery system for that tension.

Learn to Listen to Your Body

This might be the most underdeveloped skill in the human race.

To know what “heavy” feels like, you have to listen to your body.

Forget metrics for a second. Forget reps and percentages. What does hard feel like?

It’s your breath changing: quiet, then audible, then ragged.
It’s the bar speed slowing on rep 5 when reps 1 through 3 flew up.
It’s your legs starting to twitch as you initiate a lift, and defying gravity anyway.
It’s the voice in your head asking do you have one more? and not being sure of the answer.

Most people never practice listening for that voice. They spend years either avoiding discomfort entirely, or gritting their teeth and blowing straight through every signal their body sends. Neither is the skill.

The skill of listening to your body is telling the difference between this is uncomfortable and this is dangerous, and that distinction only comes to life inside your own body reps.

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The Tactical Stuff. How to Do This.

1. Progressive overload, tracked.
Same lifts, once a week, logged every session. Add a little weight, a rep, a set every week. If you’re not writing it down, you’re guessing and calling it training.

2. Compound lifts first, accessories second.
Start with one squat, deadlift, press, and hinge movements for multiple heavy sets while you’re fresh. These are your highest ROI lifts, recruiting the most muscle and building the most tension per rep. Accessories come after: smaller, single-joint moves like curls, pushdowns, lateral raises, and ab work. Not filler; this is where you diversify. Accessories hit what the big lifts don’t, and it’s where a lot of the visible muscle-building happens.

3. Rest periods matter.
Take 2 to 3 minutes between heavy sets on big lifts. I don’t care if you’re bored; put something in your ears to listen to. Rest isn’t downtime, it’s part of the process: it lets your body and nervous system reset so you can hit the next set with the same intensity. Rush it and you’re wearing yourself down for nothing.

4. Get close to failure, don’t live there.
Most sets should end with something left, a rep or two you could’ve gotten if you had to. Grinding every set into the ground is a very fast way to burn out and get injured.

5. Deload every 4 to 6 weeks.
Planned lighter weeks aren’t a break from progress, they’re what makes long-term progress possible. Heavy lifting without a deload eventually turns into an injury or a wall you can’t get past.

6. Form under fatigue.
A heavy rep with ugly form is risky. If your technique falls apart to move the weight, you’re not getting the stimulus you need for the outcomes you want. Form first, always.

7. Don’t be afraid to ask for a spot.
If you don’t train with a crew, be ready to ask for a spot when you get into heavy work. Safety first, we’re here for the long game. It’s also a great way to make new friendships; the ripple effect of asking for that spot goes well past the lift itself.

Common Mistakes
This is the ego-based stuff where bad things happen. Let’s not…

• Chase PRs. That mindset invites injury. You want base strength that holds, not a torn muscle that takes you out for weeks.

• Skip the boring stuff. Warm-up sets, accessories, and mobility work are what let you load heavy safely for a long time.

• Compare your heavy to someone else’s heavy. Building strength at any age, with any resource, is a win. Comparing your journey to someone else’s is a losing strategy every time.

The Point of All This

Heavy lifting isn’t about how much you can move once, on your best day, with everyone watching. Unless you are a powerlifter, but that’s a different article.

Heavy lifting builds strength, and strength is infrastructure. And that’s what heavy lifting is about for me.

Build it quietly, safely, session after session, so that thirty years from now you’re not frail. You don’t want to be the person who didn’t fight to get off the floor without help for as long as possible.

Be strong, on purpose, because you built it that way.

Strength is a life strategy.

Don’t die frail.

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Work with Dana

If you’re reading this thinking I want this, but I don’t know where to start, that’s what coaching is for. I work with people one on one to build a lifting program around where you are today: your body, your schedule, your goals. No guesswork, no generic templates.

If you’re ready to stop waiting for the “right” time, weight, or health milestone to get started and want to build real strength, apply for coaching with WildeFit Coaching.

Apply Here

Reminder: The first five episodes of Muscle Moments and all companion content is available for free. After, all podcast episodes will remain free and other content will be made available to paid subscribers who make this work possible.

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The belief to sit with: strength isn’t a look. It’s not a phase. It’s not a short term goal. It’s infrastructure.

Strength is the thing that lets you carry your own groceries, your kids, your future self up a flight of stairs today, tomorrow, and when you’re 85. Being capable enough to achieve your dreams - hiking the mountain, running around with your grandkids, wiping your own butt as you age - is the goal.

Strength is earned. It is fueled. It is rested. And it is powerful.

That’s the idea behind Muscle Moments. A platform for people who believe in strength who want to learn, think, and act as the strongest, most capable versions of themselves.

A podcast underpins the work here. Conversations with people like you and me, talking about why and how strength has improved their lives. There’s also conversations with sports coaches, executives, and health experts. All focused on one thing: strength as a life strategy.

Subscribe to the Muscle Moments podcast now, b/c it’s coming July 16 and I want to make sure it’s in your inbox!

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Why I’m building Muscle Moments

I spent my life observing. People around me think I was interacting, really I was copying what was happening around me to fit in. “Do as the Romans do,” right?

When I wasn’t performing in chameleon-mode, I was learning how people communicate and watching how the words they used - with or without care - made people feel. Using words to do some damage of my own along the way.

The biggest lesson: how quickly we tear each other down. In every situation, even within your own circle. The number one thing we criticize is how each other looks, especially if you aren’t “skinny” enough (let’s be clear, “skinny” can be replaced with anything, “fashionable” “rich” “educated”, etc…). I choose to believe that most don’t do it consciously, but because they’d had it done to them too, and it made them feel small; so now, deep down, they want everyone (read: women) to feel small too.

They were told to take up less space, so should you.
And don’t forget to apologize when you do take up space, that’s what good girls do.

Fuck that noise.

That narrative never sat well with me. Those actions from others always made me feel like they didn’t want me around - so I didn’t stay. Protect your peace, people. Leave that as a lesson from the past that you can carry forward.

With time, it became clear that the reason those messages didn’t sit well with me was because I only know how to do it BIG! I’d never fit in with people who wanted to keep me small.

So I became the first person in my family to leave my hometown and moved to LA in my 20s. Then I became one of the first 10 women in the world to squat over 700 pounds in my 30s. And, I had a BIG career during that time, too. I built businesses, scaled non-profits, launched VC platforms, designed internal comms at Hulu, and co-produced the first-ever TEDx. And, on the side, I coached people, too. I also survived cancer, an ectopic pregnancy, having my left kidney removed, and a ventral hernia that required a full abdominal mesh repair. (Whew! We can thrive on the other side of so much!)

Now in my 40s, I’m directing my vast experience platforming others and building resilience at shining the light on strength.

Being an athlete and coach has always been a hobby. Now, it’s my full time job.

I’m tired of skinny getting all the attention. It’s time STRENGTH gets its shine.

What is Muscle Moments

Part podcast, part publication, one home for people who want to understand what strength can do for them.

Every week, Muscle Moments will host conversations with athletes, coaches, executives and founders who’ve built real strength — physical, mental, emotional, spiritual — and writing that connects the dots. Because strength is the one thing that supports everything: your energy, your confidence, your independence. Strength is a life strategy!

It’s going to be raw, gritty, and imperfect. Just like the human experience.

On Day ONE - July 16 - I’m dropping a series of stories to tickle your brain and get you thinking about where strength shows up for you, and how it’s improved your life.

What’s the deal for subscribers

I want the stories, insights and information on Muscle Moments to be accessible.
So here’s the deal:

• Episodes 1–5, are completely free. Full audio and companion content. No catch.

• After that, every podcast stays free. Forever. The conversations are for everyone and

• The companion content, the written articles, deeper dives, live sessions, Q&As, the stuff I’m chewing on between episodes becomes available to paid-subscribers only.

If you believe in the message of strength, want to learn more and go further with me, and get the extras too, support this work.

Become A Paid Subscriber

What you can expect

• Weekly episodes, real guests, no fluff. Raw, gritty, probably not perfectly edited episodes.

• Essays that make you feel something, not homework.

• Zero apologies for being strong.

• A place where everyone gets to explore what strength means for them.

My Ask

Share this with others so they’re in the room with you when it all goes live on July 16.

Strength isn’t going anywhere. Neither am I. Let’s go.