I was never a great writer but thanks to a string of writing courses and career experiences, I became a strong storyteller. I wasn’t winning awards for my writing, but I wasn’t sitting down to write and then staring blankly at the screen like my brain just cracked in half.

Fast forward 20+ years: I’ve held 15 different positions (startups, amirite?) and with each role came more responsibility, including being more strategic and less execution focused. As much as I had my hands in the work, I really led the teams through the concept and strategy, then reviewed and approved; they put the words on the page.

Lest we forget about the uprising of technology. Growing up with computers; the Internet, laptops, mobile phones, streaming services, social media, and now AI have always been at my finger tips. Who else remembers the C-prompt?

These technologies fundamentally changed the way we communicate, the value of words, and the use of language. Preliminary research suggests that technology is making us dumber - to over simplify it - and is much more eloquently described in this 2025 MIT report “Your Brain on ChatGPT”.

Whatever the research says doesn’t matter because in my lived experience, not writing consistently has made me a worse writer, simply because I’m not training the muscles I need to be strong at it. (Is that a comma splice?)

Same with the gym or anything else in life, right? Right. And this is my point…

We don’t develop muscle, strength, or build health passively. It requires us to act with intention. To prioritize and train different muscles and habits, constantly pushing ourselves to the edge so we can go a little bit further the next time. In an IRL (IRL = in real life) training scenario, training looks different everyday. Some days, you have the energy to challenge yourself, other days it’s a struggle to walk through the door. So you take the step that is appropriate for you in that moment to generate momentum and keep going. You never regret a workout. Never.

The process I’m using to become a strong writer again is the same that I use for lifting: walk in the door, evaluate the energy I have and then sit down to write with intention. Get my brain going, generate momentum, and it’s Calgon take me away in alignment with what I can do that day. I’ve also started reading fiction again. If I can learn from other coaches, I can learn from other authors. I am confident that I will retrain my writing muscles, one rep at a time. Even in writing this letter I can feel them flexing a little harder.

This, my friends, is what we call scaling. Scaling is a strategy to help you build consistency and stay committed to your goal without driving yourself into the ground. My goal is to write articles and produce this podcast that will help you become the healthiest, strongest, most capable version of yourself. I do it because it’s something I LOVE and know the value of strength as a life strategy, and so do my guests on Muscle Moments.

Speaking of… we have three new episodes available on Muscle Moments (YAY!). Three different conversations, three different perspectives on strength as a life strategy, one common thread: the willingness to stay committed to staying strong through movement.

As always, if you have any feedback, want my perspective on a health or fitness-related topic, or you want to say “YO!”, reply to this email. I’m excited to hear from you!

To health and strength,

Dana
aka SweetDee

STRENGTH TRAINING FOUNDATIONS

I’m welcoming the first group into my Strength Training Foundations program. Feel healthy, get strong, and finally fit into “those pants”. 😉 Foundations is my 12-week, one-on-one coaching program designed for you to build real strength, boost energy, and feel at home in your body again. No crash diets, no guesswork. Results that stick. Grab time on my calendar to learn more.

CHAT WITH ME

Scale It, Don’t Skip It
with Jacki Ford

Okay, real talk: scaling isn’t something you do when you can’t hack it or don’t feel like it. It’s a strategy that keeps you ahead in the long game. I recently sat down with Jacki Ford — Nutrition Coach, CrossFit Coach, and Barber — and we got into why meeting yourself where you’re at now is the best plan for success. Musicians scale how they learn a piece of music before they ever play it all out. Turns out, this strategy works for us in many areas of life, too.

Listen Here

Find the Gym First
with Rudy Rubio

You don’t need motivation, you need to lose your excuses. I sat down with Rudy Rubio — someone who creates clarity from chaos for a living — to talk about how he made fitness non-negotiable. The answer: he got really curious about what he liked and let how he felt guide him. Now, when he travels, he can’t even go to his hotel room before he finds the local gym. It was a process, many different types of fitness, leaving CrossFit at his strongest, and dropping a barbell on his knee all helped him find the right place for fitness in his life. Most importantly he’s learned to refuse to let comparison get the last word.

Listen Here

The Lie Fear Tells You
with Dina Samara

Okay so this one wrecked me a little. I sat down with Dina Samra, someone who spent 15 years in venture capital before quitting with zero plan, buying a camper, and rebuilding her entire life from scratch. It wrecked me because I can totally relate. In this conversation, we got into the voice in your head that tells you you can’t do the hard thing (spoiler: it’s lying, every single time).

Listen Here

Muscle Moments is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

FROM THE HEADLINES

It’s not a headline but it’s been something I’ve enjoyed recently: Cottage Cheese Bagels!

A friend introduced these to me a few weeks ago, and I can’t stop thinking about them. Unfortunately, I keep eating the cottage cheese before I make the recipe. ::sigh:: So, I’m making them this weekend. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes right here on Substack. Mangia!

CHECK IT OUT

GET IN TOUCH!

If you have any feedback, want my perspective, or you want to say “YO!”, reply to this email. I’m excited to hear from you!

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Crawl, walk, run. That’s the pattern.

Lifestyle athletes - and those curious about it - could stand to remember that.

In a recent client check in, a client told me about an instance [this week!] where she drove to the gym, parked in the lot, then turned around and went home. She never walked in, never even gave herself the opportunity.

I told her, “if you make it that far, make it inside. You don’t even have to break a sweat. You just have to get out of the car and get started in the gym.” Momentum over motivation is not sexy. And it’s a truth of life.

Both of these examples use “scaling” to help us work toward a goal. Scaling is how we do everything and it’s the conversation my friend Jacki Ford and I had this week.

Jacki is a nutrition coach, Level 2 CrossFit trainer, and the owner of Cuts By Jacki. On any given day she is dialing in someone’s macros, coaching their back squat, or doing their hair. Three jobs, same goal: help people become more capable versions of themselves by starting where they are now.

On this episode we get into:

• What “scaling” means and why it’s matters

• There is no finish line to health and fitness (that’s great news!)

• What it’s like to go from “I thought I was gonna die” at her first CrossFit workout to coaching

• The underdiscussed truth of the GLP-1 conversation

• A lifetime PR she hit in jeans

Lifting Term: PR = Personal Record. Your best time or heaviest weight lifted in a specific movement or event. For example: the back squat, 100m sprint, and 1 mile run all have a specific time or weight associated with them. When you know it, you can train to best it; to have a new personal record if you want to.

Scaling isn’t the easy button.

There’s excitement that comes with something new. And for many of us, myself included, we have an expectation that we’re going to walk in and dominate this new endeavor from the start. Sure, that can happen but when it doesn’t we get frustrated and quit. Since we weren’t good off the bat, it’s not worth our time.

By accepting and repeating that pattern, we’re doing ourselves dirty. Denying our brain the chance to learn, to develop new brain-body connections. When it comes to the gym, so many people are like “oh, I can’t lift that heavy,” and then never try because in a world of instant gratification we’ve forgotten that scaling is what you do when you can’t “do it” yet.

Jacki says, “Everybody has a different ability when they come into the gym. For some, the win is just showing up to the gym. This is why I’m constantly working with my clients and asking, ‘Okay, what can you do today?’” Maybe that’s a wall push-up instead of one on the floor. Maybe it’s a lighter bar. Maybe it’s a PR. No matter what, you start where your body is, not where your ego wants to be.

One area Jacki and I align is knowing that health and fitness doesn’t have a deadline. Jacki says that it never stops, I agree. She’s been doing CrossFit for 16 years, coaching for 14 of them, and she still scales her workouts. Some days the weight comes down, some days the distance gets shorter. “I still scale because there’s some days where I’m just like, ‘I don’t have it today.’ So I’m gonna scale my workout and do what I can.”

Scaling is not weakness. It’s adaptation. Adaptation is support so you don’t have to sacrifice what you want (your long term health and independence) and need (time to yourself) because you don’t want to learn a new movement.

Scaling doesn’t stay in the gym.

“Scaling is applicable to life,” Jacki said. Cue the “ouchie” response from me. Sometimes I look at my calendar and think, I do not have what it takes for that project this week. But instead of not doing it, I look for the smallest step forward to keep momentum going, especially when I’m not into it. I’ve gotten so good at this, that I actually find myself bummed when I end up not pushing something forward each day.

Take this platform for example, I underestimated how hard it would be for me to write these recaps. Over 15 years in management, leading marketing teams…dude, let me tell you how shocked I was when I realized I’m no longer a great writer. Well, I’d hired people to do the writing for me, so the “muscle” of writing atrophied. But I’m not quitting this platform, I keep publishing. Working on a new piece each week, giving myself 10 days to draft, edit, and publish each piece. With each piece it gets a smidge easier. And yes, it’s a battle with my brain each time I sit down at my computer to write.

Scaling is about figuring out what you can do today, learning how to talk to your brain so you can keep moving forward, and adjusting your expectations accordingly. Scaling helps you stay in the game and keeps you ready to play the next day.

There’s no finish line.

Social media sells the after-photo. It does not sell the years or decades it took to get to the goal; the strength, the look, the confidence. In fact, those that do share that often get hate thrown at them in the comments. Sorry not sorry that you’re offended by the truth.

Jacki was blunt, “Social media has a million different influencers saying, ‘This is how I did it.’ But, they’re not telling you exactly how long it took them to get those results and that sets people up to fail.”

When Jacki started her journey, she didn’t step on a scale or chase a number. She changed her habits and lost 50 pounds over nine months without looking at her weight. Over time, she could feel the difference in her body and the way she moved. She knew she was building muscle by the way her clothes fit and how she felt when she looked in the mirror. Her method was focused on showing up and stacking small wins instead of chasing an end date or an aesthetic. That’s some herculean shit, but that’s a convo for a different time.

This is not a common mindset for new health and fitness enthusiasts. Few take this approach because they’ve created an“end”, when they lose 10lbs, or squat 300lbs, or fit into “those jeans”. But when it comes to health and fitness there isn’t an end, it’s a lifelong journey. “There isn’t a timeline,” I said. Longevity means more than how long you live. It means how long you keep evolving, keep doing for yourself, and keep getting better at being you, indefinitely.

A personal story: I went from squatting 705 pounds to five abdominal surgeries in two years. From ectopic pregnancies, a kidney cancer diagnosis, a full kidney removal, to needing my abdominal wall rebuilt from a massive ventral hernia. When it all fell apart, literally my abdominal wall fell apart, I wasn’t starting from zero. I scaled back up from a ceiling I already knew I could reach, because I’d already proven it to myself once. That knowing is the mechanism that got me through the SEVEN YEARS it took for me to regain confidence in myself and my body, one little win at a time.

The GLP-1 conversation, minus the shame

Jacki and I both work with clients who get support with GLP-1s. Some use them as genuine support alongside doing the work, and some use them to skip the work entirely. “If it comes down to it, and you need it for other health reasons then yes, a pharmaceutical is okay... but the trend of the GLP-1 is rough when it becomes the plan itself,” she shared.

This is a hard conversation because the research around GLP-1s is interesting, I think. There is a correlated response for GLP-1 patients and their health. What’s unknown at this time is if the medication itself is what’s making people healthier or if it’s because those who are the most successful, seeing the result inside and out, they’ve adopted the lifestyle habits and routines as part of the process.

There is a foundation for fitness and longevity. In my program, I teach it as: Daily Movement, Sleep, Nutrition, Community, Stress Management. With a focus on those five pillars we create sustainable habits as the foundation for a client’s overall health and fitness. My GLP-1 clients (who are all under Dr. supervision, not clinic-supervision. There is a difference) see sustained results over time because they have a foundation to lean on when they want to or have to stop the meds. Without the foundation, patients are likely to go back to old habits, which means “going back” to where they started. And a pharmaceutical is one of the rare things you can’t really scale because typically when you go down the medical route it changes your body; you’re not “factory made” anymore. There’s no going back.

Just like with your preferred type of movement or fitness, GLP-1s are a personal decision. And as part of the decision-making process, ask yourself what you’re optimizing for. Is the goal health, or is the goal aesthetics? No shade either way. Just be honest about what you’re chasing, because the plan changes depending on the answer.

Your Turn

Jacki’s advice for someone who’s never been able to make a fitness or nutrition stick: “Show up for yourself. Show up. That’s the only thing that works.”

Now ask yourself: where in your life are you currently sitting in the parking lot? What’s the smallest possible version of “going to the gym” you could do today? You don’t need the full workout. You don’t need the perfect plan. You need to go.

GET IN TOUCH WITH JACKI:

• Instagram: @jford79 · @amplify.nutrition · @cutsbyjacki.

• Training in the Philadelphia area? Drop in at Crossfit Delaware Valley.

QUESTIONS ABOUT WILDEFIT COACHING:
Email us at yo@wildefitcoaching.com

Rudy is a dear friend. One of the things I adore about him most is his ability to make you comfortable enough to be slightly ridiculous. Knowing this, I propped my script between us like a shield and read straight off my Google doc. “Thank God for editing,” I said.

Thirty seconds later I asked him to define strength - on a podcast about strength, no less - and he said, “I am unprepared for this question.” We laughed again.

While the laughter is inevitable, the insights he shares as an asthmatic-kid-turned-fitness-lover are applicable no matter where you are in your own fitness journey.

On this episode, we get into:

• Rudy’s definition of strength which has nothing to do with the gym

• That time he dropped a heavy barbell on his knee and what he learned

• How to make yourself feel like a loser

• Why CrossFit stopped being healthy for him

• The one thing he does first in every hotel he stays at

Strength Isn’t What You Think It Is

In Rudy’s career, the startups, nonprofits, and early stage companies call when they need to build something from nothing, he is the operator that navigates chaos and creates clarity for everyone else. Since his work is ambiguous, I expected him to tell me the gym was a place where he gets structure, a way to assert control. The place where the numbers go up and the reps are the reps, it’s cut and dry. But, that’s not what he told me.

“I’m not the same person at the gym every day,” he said. Some days he’s tired. Some days his head’s somewhere else. Some days his body won’t cooperate. “But, it’s where I practice showing up inside of chaos.”

Training to show up in chaos is his practice. Keeping it dynamic and challenging in the gym keeps him flexible for what work has in store.

Rudy grew up in Texas, with asthma. As a kid he’d rather read than run. And if you’ve ever been to Texas and felt that level of heat and humidity, you know why. Thus, Rudy is the last person you’d expect to bring fitness into his life, let alone the person who builds four rotating [workout] splits. Yet, in his twenties, in the middle of what he calls “hard resets” - breakups, job changes, cities where he left everything behind - the thing that remained constant was showing up to move his body.

“It gave me a place to be honest with himself when nothing felt real,” he said.

Honesty is Rudy’s definition of strength. “The strongest moments [of my life] are tied directly to the emotional parts of my life,” he said. He’s talking about the vulnerable moments where he’s felt most himself. The gym - the place where he trains for chaos - is also where he learned how to access his truth and decide what he wants.

Quitting CrossFit

Going for the trifecta, the gym is also where Rudy learned what doesn’t work for him.

It took real nerve to quit something he loved. Rudy spent years deep in CrossFit, the community-driven, PR-chasing, leaderboard-checking culture that thrives on comparison. He loved it. (So do I. For the right workout.) And then he left because he noticed that standing next to someone stronger and feeling the need to keep up was quietly stealing something the joy of the workout from him.

He walked away from the community he’d built a big chunk of his identity around and picked up rock climbing instead.

CrossFit wasn’t a wrong choice, but eventually he outgrew it and it just stopped being right for him.

The Comparison Trap

To this day, Rudy isn’t immune to the comparison trap. He’s honest about that, too.

A few days before we recorded, he did a workout he hadn’t touched in over a year, Fran.

It’s a ballistic workout. Oh so very taxing on the system in a short amount of time.

He texted me feeling genuinely proud of himself. Then he quickly made the mistake of looking up what the “average times” for this workout are. His time fell in the “beginner” range and just like that the joy was gone. I’m the only one he told about the workout that day, no one said a word. The joy thievery was his own; by comparing himself to an imaginary standard he ruined his own joy. He did it to himself.

“I fucking showed up,” he told me, working his way back to feeling good about it.

Ninety percent of Americans don’t get baseline movement in at all and here Rudy was mad at himself for doing what he could that day. He didn’t talk himself out of the disappointment. He let time pass, reminded himself the results aren’t permanent, and went back to training.

“It’s not that we’ll never feel the comparison, it’s a deep refusal to let the comparison be the final word we hear,” Rudy shared.

The Hotel Room Habit

The very first thing Rudy does after he checks into a hotel is find the gym.

This doesn’t even give him a chance to not know where it is or what’s available. Getting the information is programmed into his hotel check-in process. If he doesn’t, he won’t even bother to go. So, he removes the excuse before it has a chance to exist. “The more information you have,” he said, “the easier it is to get excited about something, instead of just showing up and figuring it out. Or not doing it at all.”

It’s a small, unglamorous habit. (Being fit is very unglamorous.) It’s also evidence of how he makes fitness a non-negotiable: one less decision standing between him and moving his body.

A Barbell to the Knee

Rudy’s muscle moment left a mark, literally. He was doing a workout with power cleans, loaded up more weight than he should have, and the bar slipped and landed hard on his knee. He lost skin. There was blood. And, there was more to train so there were no complaints.

His lesson was accountability. He didn’t blame the bar, didn’t blame the coach. He knew exactly what he did to end up in this position. He made an ego decision to lift more than was programmed, couldn’t lock in his form or trust the process. It ended up not being his best.

“You still have to try,” he said. “Just because I did well yesterday doesn’t mean I’m going to do well today. The gym doesn’t hand out guarantees. It hands you the same choice, every single time you walk in,” he said.

That choice is to push yourself and risk discomfort, or do what feels safe for the day.

No Cheat Meals, Just Favorite Foods

Even nutrition gets the same honesty because… (drumroll, please)...Rudy doesn’t do cheat meals.

He says the concept doesn’t exist for him [anymore]. Instead Rudy has favorite foods that he eats guilt free inside a life that also includes a quarterly dry month and a husband who’s a great cook. “I’m not restricting myself a lot,” he said. “I want to be able to enjoy the days that I have.”

No guilt math for Rudy, just a life he built and wants to be inside of.

Take It With a Grain of Salt

Before we wrapped, I asked Rudy what advice he’d leave for you. His answer was to take everything he says with a grain of salt. What works for him might not work for anyone else. His advice is to keep trying different modalities until one of them sticks. So if what you needed was permission to keep looking until you find the type of movement, the type of fitness, that’s yours, this is it.

Your Turn: What’s one thing that you gave up before you found what works for you?

If you’ve ever been on a hike like that, and you’re not an avid hiker on top of it, you might believe you’re not going to make it. For Dina, there was a voice in her head telling her to stop, that it was too hard, that this wasn’t for her, and she kept going anyway. Somewhere near the top, she realized something that had nothing to do with elevation gain: the voice telling her to stop is the same voice that’s been running her life. (That bitch!)

In this episode of Muscle Moments: fear says stop, you go anyway. On the other side you’ll find out the fear is a big fat liar. Happens 100% of the time.

We talk about:

• A definition of strength outside the gym

• Why Dina walked left 15 years in venture capital with no plan

• The ecological definition that reframes what it means to “rewild” your life

• Why boundaries are the answer

• The muscle memory of play

Strength Is Perseverance In Disguise

At first, Dina said “muscles” when I asked her about strength and quickly admitted that what we’d expect her to say, when what she really believes is that strength means perseverance. The ability to get through the hard thing and come out the other side steadfast in what you want, even when everything around you is telling you to fold.

(“The ability to do hard things” or some version of it is a similar answer across all these conversations! I’m digging in!)

Dina’s response struck me because she paired perseverance with joy, and that is not common. She believes perseverance and joy are connected and I said “tell me more!”

According to Dina, you persevere, get through the hard thing. Then you look back and there’s a physical sense of pride in having proven to yourself that you could. It sounds nebulous, but it’s the same thing that happens when you finally hit the number on the bar you didn’t think you could.

I’ve built a career telling people strength is the base layer for life; your energy, your confidence, how you show up. Dina got there through a trail. I got there through a barbell. Different doors, same room.

Rewilding is a Personal Correction.

With a 15 year career in the tech and venture capital space, Dina took the opportunity to step and reflect on why she was feeling burnt out, even though she loved the work. Through that lens, she realized that she outgrew it.

The word “rewilding” comes from ecology. When a species gets pulled out of an ecosystem, sometimes by force, the whole system tips out of balance. Reintroduce it, and the ripple effect can bring the entire system back to life.

For example, in Yellowstone there were no wolves for 70 years. No predators means the elk overgraze the riverbanks. No riverbank vegetation means no beavers. No beaver dams means the rivers stop reshaping themselves, and the birds and fish and otters disappear with them. Reintroduce one species, and the whole ecosystem finds its rhythm again.

That’s what fifteen years in corporate hustle does to a person, according to Dina. You get so conditioned to tie your worth to your title, your salary, your output, that joy and play and creativity and stillness get quietly pushed out. Rewilding is about putting back what was already yours.

What does that look like? Forms of play, things that bring you excitement; do you remember what was fun when you were little? I didn’t.

The Pivot

So, she quit her job in venture capital, bought a camper, and drove toward every national park she could find with her husband. No income. No plan beyond the road itself.

The scary part was walking away from something stable when she didn’t yet know what she was walking toward. A leap of faith based on the deepest foundation of self-trust. It’s a leap most people never take because the fear of the unknown seems heavier than the pain of what they already know.

Movement got her through it. Not in the gym, though. Traditional gym culture never worked for her, never felt like her people (I’m not offended, I swear). But, hiking did. Climbing did. Something about moving her body in nature quieted the noise enough that she could actually hear herself think beyond the fear.

The lesson here is clear: move your body and you will clear your mind. Clarity comes with movement.

Boundaries Are The Answer

We’re not telling anyone to quit their job. What Dina is asking people to notice is if the situation is filling you up or draining you? Those are two very different problems, and you get to decide if being drained works for you or not.

For the most part, real boundaries are what let you stay in a situation without it costing you everything. Creating time to turn your brain off for ten minutes. Setting a hard stop on the workday. Giving yourself the altitude to see the view from 30,000ft instead of white-knuckling through it at ground level.

This is the part of her message that I think gets missed. You don’t need a camper and a sabbatical to start practicing this. You need to get honest about which situations in your life are the ones quietly taxing you, and start setting the boundaries before you can’t.

The Muscle Moment

Yosemite Falls is the tallest waterfall in North America. Dina broke down more than once on the way up, and her husband just kept saying keep going. Making this the mantra for their journey.

At the top, it was one of those moments that bridged the experience to her personal narrative. She realized the voice that told her she couldn’t do it had been running quietly in the background for years, as the operating system for her whole life. If she could push through her fear on that mountain, she began to believe she could push through anything.

The muscle Dina flexed here is calling back to the proof that fear is wrong.

The Softer Side

Off-mic, Dina shares her secret weapon is a playlist called “Sing”.

It’s every song she used to belt out as a kid, Disney and everything else. Now she plays in the car - or wherever - whenever she needs to reset. It started as a way to reclaim parts of herself she’d lost track of. Now it’s a tool she uses to center and ground herself in knowing what she can do, with joy.

This might be the lesson I love most from the conversation: find the thing you used to love before the world told you it wasn’t productive. Do it loud. Do it often.

Your Turn

Figure out how to quiet your mind enough to hear what the joy is telling you. That’s a breadcrumb to follow.

The questions for you to consider:

• What’s the thing you’re staying in right now because it’s familiar, not because it’s good for you?

• What would it take to trust yourself enough to let it go?

Change isn’t as risky as you’re afraid it is.
But you won’t know that until you build the strength — physical and otherwise — to test it.

If you’re ready to start building that strength for real, that’s what I’m here for.

About Dina

Dina Samra is the founder of The Rewilding Collective, where she designs and facilitates nature-based experiences, retreats, and burnout workshops that help people quiet the noise, reset their nervous systems, and reconnect with themselves. She’s a certified forest bathing guide, a strategic advisor with the Perkins School for the Blind Innovation Center, and the author of the newsletter Observations From the Wild. Before all of this, she spent 15 years in venture capital and startup innovation.

Find Dina:

• Instagram: @dinasamra | @the.rewildingcollective

• LinkedIn: Dina Samra | The Rewilding Collective

• Newsletter: Observations From the Wild

• Email | hello@rewildingcollective.co

This conversation is about the gap between what medicine trains us to accept and what our body is telling us. I learned the hard way that the body communicates its needs; humans are (generally) too stubborn to listen. Cycle syncing is a framework to learn your body, and in Amy’s experience and practice, find healing.

On this episode:

• Amy’s own diagnosis which came from outside the medical system

• The four phases of a woman’s monthly cycle and how to leverage them

• Using the smallest possible unit of measurement to track progress

• Where hormone replacement therapy fits for some, not all

The Truth: Your Body Tells You What It Needs

Cramps, cravings, mood swings, exhaustion? Amy Dave, a PA and women’s wellness coach at The Wealth of Wellness, doesn’t treat these as symptoms to medicate, she treats them as information. “If you’re mindful of how [eating] that makes you feel, instead of eating a bag of chips, you’re eating dark leafy greens or a banana,” she said, describing a salt craving that’s a magnesium deficiency in disguise.

Her method for finding data that shows where you can optimize is stupid simple. Write down what you’re craving and how you feel, every day. Include your energy level, your sleep load. Start there; no app, no protocol and all of it written down in a journal by hand. Record what’s happening with your body and watch the data make patterns visible.

Unfortunately, most of us were never taught this. For the first fifteen-plus years of her career, Amy did know better. Eventually she stumbled into it; when we know better, we do better.

Four Weeks, Four Different Jobs

Cycle syncing is a wellness practice for women where you adjust your diet, exercise, and daily habits to match your shifting hormones during the four phases of your menstrual cycle.

Amy walked us through how it works:
Get your notepad and write this down!

• Bleed week: rest, gentle movement, no pushing it. This is time to rest and restore.

• Follicular week, right after your last bleed ends: cardio comes back online. Warming up the body’s system after a cool down period.

• Ovulation: this is when a testosterone surge gives you your highest output of the month, this is when to chase a new max or push a hard interval session.

• Luteal: is the week most people associate with PMS. This is strength-training week slower, controlled, still building, still putting out the effort before taking a break.

Honestly, I had heard of cycle syncing prior to this but I never knew much else than it was something. Turns out, it’s a thing.

Amy mentioned a women’s soccer team that structured an entire training block around the menstrual cycle to keep the whole team optimized. Not everyone doing the same workout, but instead everyone doing “the right workout for them.”

I did some research and learned it’s Chelsea Women’s FC in the English WSL, and the person leading the charge on this initiative was manager Emma Hayes. Around 2019, team coaches started to track each player’s individual cycle and adjusted her training load and intensity week to week. Same team, same week, different plans per player, based on where each woman actually was in her own cycle.

There are no peer-reviewed findings around this method at this time. And still, it’s been adopted by England’s national team. Then, in 2025, UEFA published a consensus statement on menstrual cycle tracking in football, noting tracking is increasingly recognized as important for supporting female athletes in an effort to further research.

Overall, research findings are neutral. More studies with consistent, high quality data inputs are needed. But we can’t discredit the improvements women who cycle sync experience. That relief is real and if a “woo-woo” methodology can bring someone relief from feeling like shit, I’m all for it.

In the conversation, I realized I intuitively sync simply because I can tell what my body needs. Not something we tend to learn without a life altering event, unfortunately. Let’s skip the trauma and start tracking. The body will show patterns before illness or disease are symptomatic. So, yeah, let’s track how we feel and see what we learn.

Two Cancers, One Day at a Time

Amy is a two-time cancer survivor. When I asked how daily movement supported her through treatment and recovery, she described a super small, and important measurement: “Yesterday I couldn’t get out of bed. Today at least I can get out of bed.”

The lesson: small progress is still progress!

That’s the same definition of strength Amy gave at the start of our conversation. When I asked her how she defines strength, she said: “the ability to do something today that you couldn’t do yesterday.”

It sounded like a nice line in the abstract. In the context of chemotherapy, strength is a life strategy.

Where Muscle Shows Up

Amy isn’t training for a number or a competition. She shows up and does her strength training routine so she can show up for her life.

She told a story about a family photo in Mexico. A photographer casually tells her and her husband to pick up their kids for the shot, and Amy, with a sprinkle of hesitation, picks up the (now) ten-year-old she hadn’t lifted in years and held him through the whole shoot, no problem.

That’s real-life strength! 10 year old humans are not babies. You need muscle to pick up and hold a child.

A smaller version of the same story in her life; years earlier, eight months pregnant, unable to make it up a hill at the zoo without losing her breath. Later, after having a baby and rebuilding her strength, she got to jog up that same hill with family to catch a glimpse of a tiger exhibit. When she was home later that night, it hit her with pride, something that was once hard, was not easier. It just happened in her life because she is consistent with her own strength program.

Neither of those is a personal record. Both are strength as a life strategy.

Now What?

Amy’s advice for where to start: “Become aware of your energy levels.” Not a program. Not a full overhaul. Attention.

What I want to add: the next time something pings inside you — a pang, a pull, a small huh, that’s odd you’d normally ignore, don’t. Talk to it, ask what it was. And give yourself room to hear the answer, even if it doesn’t arrive right away.

You don’t need to be fixed. But you do need to listen to your body. It’s giving you clues.

ABOUT AMY DAVE
Physician Assistant Of 25 Years. Women’s Wellness Coach. Founder Of The Wealth Of Wellness. Two-Time Cancer Survivor. Mom Of Three Boys. Host, This Incredible Mom Life Podcast.

GET IN TOUCH

• Website: thewealthofwellness.com

• Instagram: @thewealthofwellnessllc

• Free Guide, Live A Life Without PMS is available here.

At the end of each conversation, I go off mic and I ask my guest to provide a question that they want to ask the next guest (credit: Steven Bartlett, Diary of a CEO). When I brought this to Marshall he went quiet for a moment, turned it over in his head seemingly not to make it too obvious, or to make the question too heady.

When it comes to him, I could literally see the light bulb go off, with a sharpness in his eyes and he said “Success leaves clues.”

When I tell you my brain burst open with excitement to continue this part of the conversation I mean it, for real!

I asked him, “So what are they? What are the biggest clues that someone, not an expert, just a person, can look for?”

He didn’t hesitate with his answer, “They treat it like a non-negotiable. Just as important as going to work or making dinner for their kids. Something that has to get done,” and in the same breath, “something that sometimes gets done imperfectly. And they’re willing to give up minor comforts for it. Skip Netflix. Get up earlier than they want to. Eat the ice cream a little less often, not never, just less.”

This moment rang through me like a bell of clarity. He’s so right. The first clue for success is when it’s something that “just happens” in your day and it happens faster than you think.

Listen to this conversation with Marshall Roy, a Philadelphia-based strength coach and personal trainer with over 20 years in the game and one of my friends in this industry, to learn how he helps people make movement (strength training, specifically) a non-negotiable in their life.

On this episode of Muscle Moments, we get into:

• Why five minutes a day beats two 45-minute workouts a week

• Adaptability is the skill coaches teach, discipline is learned alone

• Coaching completely different demographics from the same core principle

• Aesthetic goals need zero apology and what happens when coaches pretend otherwise

• How you feel before a session tells you almost nothing about how it’s going to go

On the personal side, we get into his ongoing chase of a 500-pound deadlift (he’s sitting comfortably at 405 for reps right now), the constantly shifting answer to “what’s your favorite lift”, and a cameo from Fiorella, his cat, who has an uncanny sense for exactly when her presence is least convenient.

The Five-Minute Rule

Marshall’s take on consistency runs a little against the grain. Conventional wisdom says beginners don’t need much to see results, and physiologically, that’s true. Two 45-minute sessions a week from a standing start is a massive change; shit, one session a week will be effective if that’s all you have time for in the beginning.

According to Marshall, the problem is almost nobody can hold onto that, because two sessions a week is just easy enough to talk yourself out of and just disruptive enough to make you not want to shift your norm. “I don’t feel great today, I’ll do it tomorrow.” Would you say that about picking your kid up from school?

His fix is absurdly small: something, every single day, for five minutes.
Not to get fit.
To build a library of evidence that you’re someone who shows up.

He ran a version of this himself. Seven days straight of five-minute micro-workouts on Instagram Live. Some days he pushed hard, some days it was “barely there.” The point was that the five minute IG lives were non-negotiable, not that the workout was going to be hard. Small steps to build big frameworks consistently.

Marshall’s five minutes is the identity rehearsal for the thirty minute sessions that happen later.

Adaptability Is the Real Skill

Marshall doesn’t think he can coach someone to be disciplined. (I have different thoughts on this, to an extent.) What he can coach is adaptability and discipline builds on top of that.

He shared a story where a client landed in a hotel gym with nothing but dumbbells, when her week called for barbell work and bands. His fix took a thirty second text to swap the movements, stop the worry about which weight to use, and get it done. “If you end up a little lighter, do more reps. If you end up heavier, do fewer. It’s not that deep,” he said. The stakes were about if she showed up at all while traveling, not the workout itself.

I have to agree, something is better than nothing. But, I’ve always thought of adaptability as second to consistency, not a replacement for it.

While Marshall’s approach focuses on helping clients adapt, he admits he spends time coaching people to be consistent, too. Because if you haven’t built the foundation that lets you survive a bad week, there’s nothing to adapt for.

Coaching Every Body, One Identity at a Time

Trainers today are honing in on a specific niche. Not Marshall. He works across a wide range of clients: women 40 and up, teenage athletes, people carrying old injuries. The throughline is identity. “Figure out what already matters to someone, and connect the work in the gym to that,” he said.

Marshall’s example was about Moms. And he said that with moms it often means gently pushing back on a culture that assigns guilt to any priority outside their kids, while also reminding them: “you’ll be a better parent if you’re not running on empty,” and “modeling that self-care is allowed is its own kind of gift to your children.”

With teenage boys, it means leaning into what excites them. “Telling a self-conscious 16-year-old that for the next several years, he’s carrying around roughly the same testosterone levels as an athlete on drugs, legally, for free, right now,” does pique their interest, according to Marshall.

And then there’s the honesty around aesthetic goals, which Marshall believes is not a goal to be embarrassed about. In his case, w client once pointed to her abs and said “I want Jessica Biel,” then her arms and said “and Madonna.” His response wasn’t to redirect her toward something more virtuous. It was, “I love that. I love the honesty. We all care what we look like. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make anyone more evolved, it makes the goal harder to talk about honestly.”

It Doesn’t Have to Be Sexy to Be Valuable

Marshall said it best. Strength being sexy: as a physical trait, as a personality trait, as a shift in what our culture upholds as attractive, is something we agree on. But he also holds a second belief alongside it: it doesn’t actually matter if it’s sexy, because it’s valuable regardless.

Fiber, the nutrient, is the analogy we used because fiber is a hot topic right now. It’s an unglamorous nutrient with super sexy benefits. The evolution of health and nutrition is pointing directly at fiber, everyone on Instagram is chasing a fiber high; yet, it’s chronically under-consumed with real, proven, unsexy health consequences.

Strength works the same way. The confidence, the capability, the identity shift people feel from training all come from doing the unglamorous thing consistently.

FWIW & IMO, strength training itself is not sexy. It’s sweaty and snotty, and it hurts (in the best way possible). It’s the results of strength training that is sexy. So when you find someone who gets it, there’s a natural “yeah, we’re sexy” between you, even if it’s not spoken.

Your Turn

Marshall’s muscle moment keeps repeating itself. He’ll drag himself into the gym completely convinced he’s about to have a garbage session and then crush it. The feelings he has are real, they weren’t true.

So here’s the version of his closing question for you:
think about the last time you almost skipped something because you didn’t feel like it would go well. Did the feeling turn out to be a fact, or just a mood you were passing through on the way to showing up anyway?

Strength is a life strategy.

ABOUT MARSHALL

Marshall Roy is a Philadelphia-based strength coach and personal trainer with over 20 years of experience helping people get fit, strong, and more capable at every stage of life. He has been named an Equinox Top Trainer and Philadelphia Personal Trainer of the Year. Marshall and I first connected at CrossFit Del Val in Broomall, PA, and have stayed friends since.

GET IN TOUCH WITH MARSHALL

Instagram: @marshallroy
Website: marshallroy.com
Email: coaching@marshallroy.com

GET IN TOUCH WITH DANA

yo@wildefitcoaching.com

Two weeks into a free-squat cycle, at a point in life when he felt strong enough to think about getting back on a competitive platform, Mark Rogers felt his adductor go “POP.” He calls it one of the worst pains he’s felt. Even worse than the three shoulder surgeries that came before it.

The injury brought more reflection than pain; it forced him to separate who he used to be to who he would train to become. It meant letting go of who he was to step into who he wanted to be for this next chapter of life, without “what if” distractions.

Mark spent his mid-20s until recently with strength at the center of his identity.
Strength training wasn’t just part of his life, it was his life. (I can relate. It’s also how Mark and I met nearly 20 years ago.) The adductor injury cost his platform comeback attempt and it made him confront a question every human has to answer eventually: what happens when the thing you built your identity around isn’t your [primary] story anymore?

On this episode of Muscle Moments, Mark and I get into:

• Why chasing an adaptation over numbers is strength training evolved (percentages be damned!)

• Training age vs actual age

• Understanding that coaches are “just a resource” for clients will set you free

• Pain and injury are not the same thing, and the distinction between the two

• A hand-me-down breathing cue that changes how your body handles stress (or a heavy lift)

On the personal side, we get into Saturday steak-night traditions, the best salad he’s ever had (& ate five times in one week), and his [current] favorite training song which is decidedly heavier than you’d expect from a guy who talks this much about presence and breathwork.

Letting Go of Your Core Identity

Mark is candid about something all lifelong athletes experience: his favorite sports & fitness modalities, powerlifting & strength training, weren’t a part of his life, they were his whole life.

In his mid-20s, his identity centered around what he could do under a bar, or on the field. Recovery wasn’t something he thought about, because he didn’t feel like he needed to. He pushed every session as hard - or harder than - the last, because the training was the identity. No separation.

Somewhere in his early-40s, Mark had to make peace with a new truth: lifting, strength training for sport, isn’t his life anymore. Through the evolution, he learned how to evolve to make it part of his identity, which meant building an entire career around it.

I talk about this a lot with my own clients, most are rebuilding strength after life took over and they lost confidence in what they are capable of. Unfortunately, when you stop moving, the body stops adapting, so going back to what worked 20 years ago is like stepping into an old identity that won’t run on your current operating systems, it will not produce the desired results.

Chase the Adaptation, Not the Number

Mark asked me to ask him what he’d ask his 25-year-old self, so I did. The answer came without hesitation, “Stop chasing numbers. Chase the adaptation,” he said.

Chasing a number means measuring your training against a single weight for the day. It could be a PR, a max, or a percentage, in any of those cases it’s a quantifiable number. It’s a situation where either you did, or you didn’t. It has it’s place, but according to Mark, it can really make or break your day.

Chasing an adaptation means training because of what it’s doing to my body, and checking in to make sure it’s what your body needs.

Behest of my deepest desires, most people do not need to lift hundreds and hundreds of pounds to achieve the benefits of strength training. I’ve learned to accept this, for my clients more than for myself.

When your workout focuses on adaptation, you’re focused on how you feel. A heavy three-rep squat can be the right stimulus for a 50-year-old client, but the same lift would barely register for a college athlete.

Getting a person’s body to adapt has many sequences to build from: Volume, load, even tempo can all be adjusted to stimulate the training effect without adding weight to the bar. This is a nuance most overlook because chasing the number is simpler, it’s concrete. Chasing adaptation means getting in touch with your feelings. And, it’s easier for coaches to spot.

This also aligns with a core belief that more does not mean better when it comes to building muscle.

The Washington Post recently released an article that analyzed over 100,000 people and found the sweet spot for strength training is around 90 to 119 minutes a week. That’s two sessions in the gym a week. Mark’s read tracks with what he teaches: past a certain point, more time under the bar isn’t better training, it’s likely chasing the dopamine hit that comes with being in the gym.

The key is knowing when the adaptation your body needs has happened. Everything after that is ego.

Coaches Are a Resource Not a Fixture

Mark coaches athletes from all skill levels including Paralympic swimmer, Lizzi Smith.

Mark has trained Lizzi through two Olympic cycles. Her presence in the gym gave him a regular reminder about what his job is as a coach. “We are just a resource that they see maybe two to three hours a week,” he says. “They are on their own the rest of the time.”

A small statement with a large correction. A lot of coaches (start to) believe their program is the most important thing in a client’s life, it’s the answers to all that ails them, and it’s sold as such. I get it completely, our clients’ success is our life but their time with me, as a coach, is only part of their life. The training is real, the stimulus matters, but the person walks out the door and lives an entire life that has nothing to do with their coach. Our job is to make sure the two or three hours we get are valuable for them, it leaves them feeling the impact of our time together.

I believe this understanding is part of what makes Mark a successful multi-faceted coach for over two decades.

Pain Is Not Injury

“Pain does not mean injury,” Mark says. “You can have pain without injury. Sometimes they are not mutually exclusive, but they can be one and the same.”

Until you’ve lived both sides of it, it’s a hard distinction to make. For Mark, the adductor tear was an injury; sudden, debilitating pain is a clear sign to stop. The discomfort that comes with training isn’t a clear stop sign; in training it’s tension and fatigue that are the ordinary cost of asking your body to adapt to something harder than it’s done before.

The line between the two comes down to honesty. Know what your goal is and stay aligned to that goal. Center your training around what you can currently do, not what you think or wish you could do. He calls the latter “trying to ride two horses with one ass,” chasing strength and a small body composition goal at the same time, at max intensity, and wondering why neither is working. We can’t out-train dishonesty about what we’re capable of in the gym.

The adductor injury slowed Mark down long enough to force him to retrain smarter. Today he can free-squat pain-free because he stopped trying to out-muscle the truth about his body’s capacity and started working with it instead.

Your Turn

Mark closes the conversation with a question: are you chasing a number, or are you chasing the adaptation you need?

Write down what you’re currently measuring yourself against. Is it a PR, a number on the scale, or a pace you used to hold. Then ask if that number tells you the truth about where you are today, or whether you’ve been chasing a version of yourself that no longer needs defending.

Strength is a life strategy.

You don’t get to keep the old identity and gain the new results. Chase the adaptation.

ABOUT MARK

Mark Rogers is the founder of MR Sports Performance, based out of Trybe Wellness and Performance Center in Leander, Texas, where he works as a performance specialist with clients ranging from general population adults to collegiate athletes to Paralympic and professional competitors. He has spent nearly 20 years in the private sector coaching strength and performance across every level of athlete. He is a father of four.

GET IN TOUCH WITH MARK
Instagram: mr_saf_atx
Website: trainwithtrybe.com

While painful at first, she tells this story because it’s the hinge her life turned on. “One day you’re fine. Next, it’s gone,” she said. She knew this to be one of life’s truths, because she watched it all burn down in front of her, so if it can all go away in a blink, then why does the risk of asking for something and hearing “no” scare her? So she stopped letting it, and decided staying quiet was not worth never finding out if she’d get a “yes” or a “not right now.”

So Elise started asking for what she wanted. Small requests at first; a stretch assignment at 23 she had no business requesting, which is how a Southern woman in her early career ended up building a life in New York City. Then bigger: a seat at the table, a title, a raise. A career built, deliberately with support and clear asks along the way.

The story she shares with us is the story of what happens when you say the quiet part out loud and ask for what you want instead of waiting for someone to notice.

If it can all go away in a blink, then why does the risk of asking for something and hearing “no” scare us so much?

In our conversation, Elise and I chat about:

• The house fire that inspired her to ask for what she wants

• Why suppressing what you want costs you your body

• The physical breaking point that forced her to listen

• How she rebuilt her week around listening to her body

• Ambition and wellbeing aren’t opposites

On the personal side, we get into her love of Sade at full volume mid-cardio session, why she’s determined to learn to knit even though it’s kicking her butt, and the Cindy Crawford morning routine that inspired how she starts her own day.

The Cost of Not Asking

Elise makes a point that’s easy to nod past and hard to sit with: suppressing what you want doesn’t only cost you the thing you wanted, it costs you your body.

For her, it showed up as TMJ so severe it started affecting her hearing. Hip pain. Sleep that wouldn’t come and brain fog so thick she couldn’t tell whether she was tired or high. She’d had an autoimmune disorder earlier in life and did not want to go back to that world of medication and monitoring; her body’s warning system had her attention.

We only have one central nervous system and it goes into fight-or-flight when we perceive we’re in danger and it also activates the same response, in a smaller way, every time you swallow what you want instead of voicing your desires.

Ask for the raise, the help, the boundary - or don’t - and carry it.

Over time, “carrying it” stops being a metaphor for you not asking for what you want. It shows up as stress, tension, a jaw that won’t unclench, hips that won’t release, and for some people worse.

Elise’s body didn’t wait for her to connect the dots. It stopped functioning just enough that she couldn’t operate at her best, and she knew it.

Reset the Nervous System

Elise is a serious reader. Autobiographies, mostly; she mentioned Cicely Tyson’s memoir Just As I Am several times. Underneath the book recommendations is an instinct: the body has to get somewhere calm before the mind can think straight. Vibration plates. Walks with an audiobook. A hobby that occupies her hands so her brain has permission to stop narrating.

That instinct has real research behind it. The Breakout Principle by Dr. Herbert Benson and William Proctor, a book that I read often as I was climbing the corporate ladder, made the link that performance and clarity don’t come from grinding harder. They say that breakthroughs come in four phases:

1. a period of real, sustained effort or stress

2. a deliberate release of that effort (through repetitive movement, an absorbing task, or simply stepping away)

3. a “breakout” moment of clarity that shows up almost involuntarily once the release happens, and

4. a return to your normal state carrying that new clarity with you.

Elise’s vibration plate ritual where she makes herself stop, and use the plate to shake up her energy physically interrupts the spiral, so she can come back to her to-do list and triage. It’s a a breakout mechanism she built for herself.

So is my experience under a barbell: the demand of the lift forces total presence and trust. When you can’t get your head there, you step away; back off, and come back to get it. The clarity about the rest of life shows up on the other side of the set.

Asking Is a Strength Practice

Elise is candid that asking comes easier at work than at home for her. She built the professional skill deliberately: reach out, make the ask, take the “not right now” without deciding it meant “never.” The personal version is harder. It means admitting she can’t do it all herself.

I understand why this is a harder “rep” for her. Asking a colleague for a stretch assignment risks a professional “no” or “not right now.” Asking a partner or a parent or a friend for help risks something that feels more personal, being seen as needing something by people whose opinion matters to you.

This is the parallel to lifting. Loading a bar with a spotter you trust, in a room full of people who already know your name, is a different kind of vulnerable than lifting alone. You have to ask for the weight you want. You have to ask someone to stand where you need them, not just anywhere convenient. Do that enough times under a bar, and the muscle you’re building isn’t just physical, it becomes the skill to name what you need out loud and trust that asking won’t cost you the relationship.

Your Turn

Elise’s closing question to the Muscle Moments audience doubles as a homework assignment (not so sorry. It’s worth it!)

Are you asking for everything you want? What are you leaving on the table?

Write it down.

Everything you’ve talked yourself out of asking for — at work, in a relationship, of yourself — put it on paper. Not because writing it down manifests it (but it helps!), but because the list itself is a diagnostic tool. It shows you exactly where you’ve been quietly absorbing a cost your body’s keeping track of, and you don’t know it, yet.

Strength is a life strategy.

It takes a lot of strength and courage to ask for what you want. Go get it.

ABOUT ELISE

Elise Brown is a strategic marketing leader with over a decade of experience, primarily in the financial services and venture capital industries. She currently serves as SVP of Marketing at All Raise, where she leads the organization’s marketing, communications, events, community engagement, and brand strategy to support women and nonbinary investors in venture capital. Prior to All Raise, Elise served as Partner and Chief Marketing Officer at Anthemis, a global venture capital firm, where she oversaw marketing, brand management, communications, events, and business development across the organization. Her expertise also extended to providing operational and go-to-market support for startups within Anthemis’ portfolio, helping founders accelerate growth and strengthen their market presence.

GET IN TOUCH WITH ELISE

• LinkedIn: Elise Brown

• Instagram: @fabworldofelise

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

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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

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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When Laura caught herself back…

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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

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.

Upgrade to Paid

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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 …

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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 yo…

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