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THE podcast for navigating all things midlife with honesty, humor, and heart
Heidi (00:14)
Well, hello there. Welcome to the Evolving Together Podcast. This is the place where we talk about all those things that happen in midlife with honesty, humor, and heart. I'm your host, Heidi Sexton, and today we're going to talk about, well, how we can stay young. No, seriously, we're gonna talk about a lot of things regarding longevity, ⁓ ways to prevent injury, but also to have strength and to look and feel younger.
We want to keep up with the younger generation, right? I mean, we don't want to be left out, and whether it's children or grandchildren or just our own dreams and ambitions, we want to have the energy and the strength and the stamina to be able to follow those dreams in midlife and well past midlife. I have with me today Ashley Anderson from Functional Fitness in Pass Christian, Mississippi, or Pass Christian if you're from somewhere else.
She is far more than a personal trainer and functional nutritional therapist. She also holds a degree in movement and sports science from Purdue, puts a focus on healing the gastrointestinal system, which is your gut slash microbiome, and balancing hormones, which all makes perfect sense because this is all connected. And she's currently participating in the Active Life Professional Mentorship Program. So damn girl, you are Miss Fancy Pants.
Ashley Anderson (01:37)
I gotta keep
busy. Thank you, I'm excited to be here.
Heidi (01:38)
I love it. Well, welcome Ashley. Yeah,
you're my very first guest who I I don't know and you were recommended by three different people. And so when my listeners speak, I I listen. And so I thought, well, I need to have her on. So this is gonna be fun because my family and I we love health talk. We call it health talk, and it's like we're always there is no family function.
Or holiday that goes by where we're not talking about health or fitness or something like that. So this is my jam.
Ashley Anderson (02:09)
Yeah, mine too,
and I'm the person that's being asked and I'm kinda like, I don't know if I wanna unpack this here today. And it involves usually in those conversations, I tell everyone stop majoring in the minors.
Heidi (02:21)
explain that a little bit more.
Ashley Anderson (02:21)
So people, so
so when we talk about family, my they're always bringing to me these trends, like whatever the trend is of the day. My dad wants to know if we should do we be doing cayenne and lemon in his water, insert whatever it is, like something like that. And I say, Stop majoring the minors. And he's like, Well, da da da da. And I'm like, Yeah, but like you are you eating five servings of vegetables every day? Like sometimes we get so deep and we want this one detailed thing. And I'm Are you doing this little simple thing? Like, do you eat fruit like at least once a day? And we get so far.
From that, that we start majoring in the minors, and that's like how I kind of like to look at it: like fitness, nutrition, health, longevity, like all of it is let's let's make it less complex. Like, it is complex, it's scientific, and there's a lot of research and studies. And I've spent almost 20 years digging into all of that stuff. But if we want to be successful, we have to break it down into real things and real habits and real actions that you can actually do on a day-to-day basis. So, like instead of majoring in the minors, let's major in something big like how to build a breakfast. Like, that sounds really important. Like, can you put
those things together that move the needle.
Heidi (03:24)
Right. And
I'm a certified health coach and
I've always preached that
keep it simple, you know. The traffic light eating and just like eat real food. You know, five to seven servings of vegetables and fruits a day, leaning more on the vegetables. Like you don't the magic bullet doesn't exist. The you know, the easy button.
It doesn't exist. And there are trends, like you say. And I do actually want to ask you about one trend, but I'll I'll circle back around to it. It's creatine. So yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. ⁓ and I hope I don't forget to ask you about the creatine, because that's been a newer thing in my world. But so I I like that majoring in the minors because there are so many things that come up and it's like it's hard to know if it's a trend that's worth if it's gonna be major or not. But I think starting from that
Ashley Anderson (03:53)
Ooh, yes, okay. I'm r I love all the trends. I'm happy to talk about any of them.
Heidi (04:15)
foundation. I always I call it foundational nutrition. But I don't know enough about the foundational fitness part of things because I've always been very active I guess. And it wasn't until until I don't know, last several years where I kind of just pulled back. And I think that I guess I'm lucky in in the way that I've you know, my my physique tends to hold its shape pretty well overall. But that doesn't mean I'm physically fit and
So w functional fitness is the name of your company. So can you just explain to me I when I hear functional I think of something that that works. So
Ashley Anderson (04:53)
Yeah. Okay,
so ⁓ in twenty eighteen I moved to Minnesota. So my husband grew up in a rural small town. I started working at the gym functional fitness. That's actually how I ended up with functional fitness in Mississippi. ⁓ I worked there. It very like how do we make movement part of our Life to improve our Life? So you don't need to be spending six days a week, seven days a week in the gym.
The goal of the gym isn't to make you better at the gym. Like, unless you're like competing in something. Olympic lifting, powerlifting, you're a triathlete, like whatever it is, which totally cool. Yes, you can be good at being in the gym. But most of us, we're not trying to PR bench press or deadlift 300 pounds. I mean, maybe we are. Again, like it's great goals, but for a lot of people, like n those are just numbers that they could have. They are in the gym so they can make their everyday Life better. I'm 70 years old and I can still like in the midst of
In
the Gulf Coast for us, like we're still have stairs if you live on the water and you want to live in your house and you don't want to give it up. Well, if you can't go up and down stairs, then you don't have any functional health. Like we need to see those things. So functional metrics and what people are trying to do are different from person to person. But the whole idea is movement for a long term for what you need. What are your activities? What do you want to be doing at 60? What do you want to be doing at 70? What you want to be doing at 80? And what are the movement patterns that you need to have and maintain throughout all of those? ⁓ like one we all want, probably be able to get up and down off the toilet.
ourselves. Well like we have to be able to sit down and stand back up. In a lot of cases without holding on to something. So what did those look like? And that's like kind of like, hey you're here. This is how we get you there.
Heidi (06:27)
I love that. And I think we don't think about those things when we're younger. ⁓ we just kind of think we got all this time to figure it out. When and when you're younger, you your rebound is just phenomenal. The resiliency. I mean, the body just says, Yeah, you know, even recovery, you know, you get hurt or break a bone or something, you recover faster. And so you know, you know, you're not thinking down the line it's like, well, gosh, I hope I can get off the toilet seat on my own when I'm 65.
Ashley Anderson (06:39)
So
So
like I think about this a ton though. So I work with like basically eight to eighties. I have literally someone in every decade of their Life in the gym. ⁓ I always talk about when I'm teaching high school kids, middle school age kids, when I'm talking them, I'm not yes, I'm gonna make them more athletic. I'm gonna do all of the things that I I do, but I want them to love the gym. Because if you learn to love the gym at 10 and you l know how to still love the gym gym at 16 and you know how to love it at 17, you only need to l love it at twenty-three when you first start your first job and things are stressful and
Now you could still doing it at 33, your entire lifestyle changes. If you can consistently work out two times a week, starting in high school, college, and you keep that throughout the lifetime, you will almost always look fit. Like it's but it's a lot harder if you start in your 30s or your 40s, and now you're trying to look fit, and you're like, people will be like, man, I wish my legs looked like yours. I'm like, I have been training them for 20 years. Like I am in the gym every week. Maybe I only get two workouts in, maybe I only get one, but a lot of times that look that we're looking
Heidi (07:48)
Right.
Ashley Anderson (07:54)
Looking
for. Like, I want to be fit like that. I want to do that. It literally has less to do with like how much someone's doing. If they're going five days a week, it's literally they've spent the time in the gym. That's what I think fitness is. You can't buy it, you can't someone else can't do it for you. You can't pay someone to make it better. Like you have to do the work. When you I mean, like, I'm in my I'm almost 40. When I see people that are in their 40s and they're fit, I know that they have invested in their time in like in meal prepping, in making a plan, in prioritizing the gym. Like, and after
Someone that's in their 40s, and I don't have kids. I still like I own a business, my husband owns a business, we're busy, but like it takes a lot of effort. Like, and I'm in the gym every day, but like I'm at work, so sometimes it's like I should work, not work out. So, like, I get all of the excuses, but it really is something like if you can start early, it's better, but starting later is better than not starting at all. Like, the best time to start was yesterday, and the second best time to start is now, kind of thing. And the gym is definitely that because I would say, like, when I see
Clients that have never trained before and they're in their 60s, I notice huge improvements in 30 days. It takes one month, two times a week. Like it's it's so small because when you are undertrained or untrained, whichever way you want to look at it, a little bit makes a huge impact. And if my clients are 60 years old and they've never trained before, I start them at two days a week. I'm not like, you need to be in here three days a week or four days a week. Two days a week. But
Heidi (09:01)
Really? Okay, so that
Ashley Anderson (09:21)
things are gonna pop up. Things are not gonna feel great. Like you've woken up in the morning and been like, ooh, that doesn't feel that great. And then three days later, that's fine. And then something else doesn't feel that great. We live to train another day. Like that is, we're not training to die at the end. We're living to train again on Friday. Whatever that looks like.
Heidi (09:31)
So
Right,
right. And so do you do that two days a week because of the rest period that's required or?
Ashley Anderson (09:41)
So,
I mean, one recovery, two, they're going to get a good idea of how their body feels after each session. So, you know, if we train Monday and Wednesday, and I've, you know, 60, 70 years old, I don't normally have them train a Monday and Wednesday. They train like a Monday and a Thursday or a Tuesday and a Friday. And that is because they get an ample amount of time, so we can actually see. So if you've been training and you're familiar, there's something called DOMS, which is delay muscle onset delay onset muscle soreness. Wow, I can't even do an acronym. See, we had this talk about acronyms, and I told you I'd use them all the time, and apparently I
Heidi (10:08)
I know, I'm I'm d
Ashley Anderson (10:10)
don't know how to break him down.
Heidi (10:11)
terrible with acronyms.
Ashley Anderson (10:13)
So if they have any delayed issues, it might not be that day that they work out. It might be then not be the next day. It might be the following day. So two days after their workout. So that gives us time, like, hey, you know, I'm feeling a little tight in my back. Okay, well, that can be workout related. We'll also ask about other stuff, but that gives us enough time to make adjustments that we need for their next training day. you can definitely train a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It's totally doable. But what I find is if you make it too much, it's very easy to quit. If two days a week, two days a week is easy. Like, it's only two hours. Like you can literally come.
Up with a lot of things, like two hours is not bad. ⁓ also, this is the difference between like coming in and like working out at the same days on the same times. The majority of my clients have a community aspect as well. Yes, they see the same coaches and the same people are training them, but they also have the same training friends in their training hour every day. ⁓ and as if we look like research-wise, like blue zones, if anyone looks into blue zones, one of the biggest things for longevity is community. So now you have the fitness, which is gonna help with your longevity, and now you have a community of other people that are prioritizing their.
Fitness that you spend time with every week. It is like here it's the one thing and here's the other thing, and now together when you put them together, like we're way up here. exactly. So, I mean, it's really important to do the movement, but sometimes it's just as important to get out of your house and do the movement with someone else.
Heidi (11:20)
Yeah, it's ⁓ exponential. Yeah.
Yeah, th I've never heard that
Dom, the delayed onset ⁓ yeah. And that makes so much sense because if you're just pushing and grinding and you're not paying attention. So when my mom moved in with me, it's been a little over a year, she's gonna be eighty two this year. So she moved in last April and when she moved we we drove a van
Ashley Anderson (11:36)
Onset muscle set soreness. Yep.
Heidi (11:55)
two days drive down from Colorado, she could barely get up the two steps into our patio and then the two steps up into the house. And my husband had put up railings so that she could, you know, be safer, which I'm a big fan of railings at at my age. I'm like, don't go down the stairs without holding on to something. Or at least have one hand free, because we're not paying attention to what we're doing, first of all. I'm I have my balance is great, but half the time I'm on my phone or my glasses are half on or off. And it's, you know, anyway. ⁓
so I started working out with her doing silver and fit classes or silver sneakers and I at first I thought, my gosh, I'm just here because I want to support her. But boy, it was a good workout and it was three days a week. And what I noticed is that, well, her movement got better and she's able to do more. she was doing pool exercises and then she's moved up, you know, she's graduated up to the silver sneakers, which is I'm telling you it
It it depends the weights you use and things like that. She said to me, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, She shows me her arm, she said, Look at this. I said, I said, and it actually did look different. And she said, That's muscle. I said, Yeah, it is muscle. And that's what I've been you know, I she says I cracked the whip. I'm like, Well, I I will take the credit. If you don't want to take the credit for working out, I'll take it.
That's the easy one. But she's developing muscle and she started these classes when she stopped the pool. The pool was lovely, but when she started doing the actual weights and the and the bands and the things like that, that's when she started to develop the muscle. And it was only I think she was going three times a week and sometimes she'd miss one day. ⁓
for maybe three or four weeks. And she was starting to feel even at eighty one those muscles and the strength and her walk is different and and she holds herself differently. And so yeah, I mean it's it's truly never too late, but if you can start earlier, that makes sense.
Ashley Anderson (13:51)
Exactly. So the
so when we look at it, we talk about and I can I can look up the numbers and give them to you because I don't remember them off the top of my head, but starting in your third decade of Life, you start to lose muscle mass unless you are actively combating against it. But we never talk about the magic that it doesn't matter where you start and when you start, you can maintain or gain muscle at any point in your Life. It's not like, hey, I'm losing muscle, I should just do nothing about it. If you had never trained and you were 60 years old and you walked into the gym tomorrow and
You started building like doing strength training. You used weight machines, you use resistance bands, body weight for some people that could be a really good starting point as well. If you started right now, you can maintain and stop the muscle mass loss at any age, and you can still have potential to build muscle if you're eating for that goal. So, like that's the other thing. We have to be having our protein to build muscle, otherwise, we can't build it. But like you can do it at any age, and that's what makes it so cool. And to see the improvement.
Improvements and the progressions and that kind of stuff. And it really becomes this mindset that I don't want to keep going in the direction that I'm going, or I still want to do these things. I still want to put my luggage in the overhead. I still want to travel and I want to insert insert the location that you still haven't got to go to. if you weren't fit enough to do it, how would that make you feel? Like, and not that's some of that's encouraging you, like, don't wait until you know you're retired or whatever to do stuff, because I think there's a huge proponent to that, but also like, can you be fit enough?
Heidi (15:11)
Yeah.
Ashley Anderson (15:21)
at retirement to do the things you want to do.
Heidi (15:24)
I yeah, that's a great mindset because again, when you're younger you're not thinking of those things. You're ⁓ it creeps up on you and all of a sudden you're like, Ooh, I can't do XYZ like I used to or that hurts when I, you know, do it now as before I never it was not even a thought. And ⁓ and that's honestly I think where, you know, I wanna be strong. I wanna age well and my dad was ninety-two when he passed away and he was ⁓ well up until he was ninety, he was super active. He took up tennis
in his seventies and rollerblading and all kinds of stuff, downhill skiing, competitive downhill skiing, I think when he was i in his eighties. and I want to age like that. You know, I want that opportunity,
Heidi (16:08)
hey, I have a huge favor to ask you. Okay, two, two favors. First, could you stop and go to wherever you're listening and give the Evolving Together podcast a five star review? That would mean so much. It helps the podcast move up in visibility
The other request that I have, please, please, please, is
could you share this podcast with at least one person that you think needs to hear this information? Thank you so much.
Ashley Anderson (16:34)
Well, and I'm you know, I'm from the perspective I get to see people of all different shapes, forms, walks of Life, ages in the gym. And it is fun to watch. I have a client, he's in his mid eighties, and I can watch him do pull-ups. And I have female clients that are said, I'll never be able to do a pull-up, and here they are, they're gonna turn fifty this year and they're doing their first pull-up of their Life. Like, there is no limitation of what you're capable to do. All of the limitation just lives between your ears. Like, and that same with same thing I s tell a high school athlete that wants to play at the next level. Every limitation lives between your ears. All of it is what you're
Heidi (16:57)
Right.
Ashley Anderson (17:04)
Saying to yourself, I can't do it. Okay, and as soon as someone says they can't in the gym, I say, okay, let's change it. Do you know how quickly everybody changes their mind about doing it? Like, no, no, no. I'm like, so it's challenging for you, or this is difficult, or insert whatever the thing is. But like, that is the biggest thing about the gym is like one, it's never gonna feel good the first time you do it. Like, it doesn't feel good. It feels kind of weird, you feel silly. ⁓ but like the the other side of it is what happens in you.
You know, three months, four months, five months down the road when you've been doing it and doing it consistently, and now all these things are hard, are easy, and you can make them harder. That's the other part about the gym where people, the gym is also the place where you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Like, it's not, it shouldn't be easy. Like, you should feel muscles burning. You should maybe sweat. You don't not everyone sweats, like that's fine. But like you might actually sweat doing this. You might be sore the next day. ⁓ I mean, like, I don't like to do it to myself, but sometimes I did stuff.
Too hard, and I like am ooh, getting off the toilet is kind of painful. Like, I've done it to myself. I don't love to do it. I don't train my clients that way. I don't train myself that way anyway anymore. Because if I make myself so sore I can't do other things in my Life, like that's not the point. Again, training is to make everything in my Life better. The things I like to do, I can get on on the boat from without having to use the ladder because it's in the back of the boat, and I want to get up on the front of the boat. Like, I want to be able to do those things. which means I can't be so sore from leg day that I can't.
Can't push off my legs because I did something silly. And and you know, I've had knee surgeries, I've had like like I don't want to be in pain, like really when it comes down to it. And that's you know, from almost 40. Like I'm the same as everybody else that walks in the gym. I understand what it feels like. I know what it's like to hurt, I know what it's like to not want to hurt, I know what I'm willing to do. And if you are willing to do the work at any age or any point, injury, no injury, I fell and I my kids are worried about me living by myself, whatever that is, like there's always a starting point, and there's always
Heidi (18:47)
Yeah.
Ashley Anderson (19:02)
moving in the right direction.
Heidi (19:04)
I like that. Yeah, I I was never a gym person.
And well I I joined a gym when I lived in New York City. My roommate, we found this ⁓ it was like what do they call those kind of gyms where they're just like like the free weights and it's like it's just like sweat and weights. I mean there was it was as bare bones as you could get. And it was in Hell's Kitchen and you went down these stairs and I mean they had free weights, which of course I didn't know what I was doing. And and then I think at one point we stepped up our game and we joined some fancier gym, which
didn't last long because I couldn't afford it. And and that was it. I I never joined another gym. And part of it for me was also just I'm I'm kind of an introvert. I know I'm doing a podcast, but I'm still very much an introvert and I don't like to always run into people and I don't want to talk to people all the time. And so for for whatever reason people will share their Life stories with me at the grocery store. And you know, I I I now I'm grateful that, you know, people feel that it's a safe space to share.
But sometimes I just just want to stay in my hole. So I recently started going to the gym because I I was taking my mom and I'm like, I can't preach it unless I'm doing some of these things. And I thought, okay, this is kind of fun. I I'm actually enjoying this, but I didn't really know where I didn't know what to do. I think that trainers are very valuable especially if you are just starting out.
I have so many questions. But first of all, the first question is how do you find somebody that is good for where you are? And this podcast is for people in midlife, although I do have quite a few listeners in their twenties and thirties, so I hope they're really paying attention. The right start young, start now. how do you find a trainer who
Ashley Anderson (20:42)
Start now.
Heidi (20:51)
Can help somebody who's never done anything before, but they're in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and up. Because I mean, if you're in your 20s and 30s, that's a whole different game of find I would imagine finding a trainer that can work with you safely versus f you know, older, because I took a class, I'm not gonna name any names, I don't know who knows who. She's a great teacher. But I could tell she had no clue what
was right or good for people in their fifties and sixties. And yeah.
Ashley Anderson (21:23)
So this
is this is the really hard part. if you were eight, you would do squats, and if you were eighty, you would do squats. my athletes do the latter, my clients in their seventies do the latter. Like intensity is the majority of the thing with that. So things that I would look at for a trainer. And when I'm like if you find me on social media, you're more than welcome to message me and tell me where you're at. And if I know a good quality trainer in your area, I'm more than happy to pass your name along. or pass their name along. Because I think that's important. I I
Heidi (21:48)
Awesome. Okay.
Ashley Anderson (21:51)
I've been in the industry a long time. Like, I know I have connections in a lot of different places. And I think sometimes we miss out on like, hey, so and so is really good. And I think if you're on social media nowadays, like that you no one's gonna see me with my shirt off and a sports bra. Like, bro, I'm 40. No one wants to I I don't want to see that. I don't want to share that I like want to wear full clothes when I train in the gym. Like, so social media is like a very hard thing in the fitness industry because I see people
Writing programs, I'm like, you are 22 years old, you do not know what a body feels like at 42. Like, you just don't understand what it feels like. I have done this a long time. I you're right, I don't know what it feels like to be 82, but I've watched enough 82-year-olds moved in the last 20 years that I'm pretty gosh darn good at it.
Heidi (22:26)
Yes, yes. Yeah.
Ashley Anderson (22:38)
personal training is usually a very competitive industry. So I don't want to help you because you could steal my client. I, on the other hand, think everyone could work with anybody. I'm just a t one of those people like you should find a trainer that you like.
You are gonna spend a lot of time with them. You probably wanna be able to carry on a conversation with them, which sounds really silly. But if you don't like their approach and you don't like how they talk to you, or they're too direct, or they're too soft, or whatever that is, you're not gonna keep up with it. That like make sure you have someone that you genuinely want to spend an hour with. As a trainer, I genuinely like to have clients that I want to spend an hour with too. So I'm also screening you, so don't think that's gonna go in both ways. ⁓ the next one is make sure you're working with a trainer that's going to do some form of movement assessment.
They are going to watch you move. They are going to some clients assess posture in a standing position. Some clients like to like I do walking and I put people through the active Life movement screen. but there's tons of other movement screens. I know NASM which is one of the training certifications, does one. There's a bunch of different ways. They should watch you move. Like, if I don't know how you move, I probably shouldn't just be writing you'll work out. ⁓ otherwise, I'm just throwing stuff on the board.
Heidi (23:45)
That's a that's a really good point. Yeah.
Ashley Anderson (23:48)
The other one is if you are working with a trainer and they do not have notes somewhere about your training sessions, like we use an app for our clients in the gym. We are recording their weights, we are switching exercises, we are keeping notes and status updates. Hey, I want to try these exercises with you next. We are tracking all of that in the app. Funny enough, our clients can see the majority of the stuff that we're tracking, so they can look and see what we're deciding for them. So we like to keep it really open. ⁓ I know sometimes trainers like to keep stuff in shorthand like that kind of thing. Like I'm totally fine, but your coach should be tracking your information.
information. ⁓ I will say that we notoriously don't normally track body weight or make our clients do pictures. But if your goal is weight loss, if your coach is probably not going to track your weight on a weekly basis or they're not going to make you do progress photos, you probably don't have a coach that's tracking your weight loss. But I don't typically work with a lot of weight loss clients. So that is typically why I don't do it. I am more of a we're trying to improve performance and like performance can be anything from any range. So someone that you like that you're going to enjoy being around someone that is going to screen you someone that is going to
Go into your health history, aches, pains, injuries. ⁓ because I work with an aging population, I am huge on injury training. Have you been to PT and you can't like you just can't get over the hump? Or you finish PT but you don't feel ready for all your activities? Are you post-surgery? Are you anything like that? That is like kind of where I love to live in the health and fitness. I want to make your golden years truly your golden years. How do we make you feel better? ⁓
There are so with the Active Life program that I'm going through there are tons of other professionals as well. This is gonna be really high touch, high-level training. It is not inexpensive. So like I can connect you with people like that, but I also know people who train in other similar to what I do and literally all over. But ⁓ like really those are the most important things. You probably want someone that has a certification, and I know tons of trainers that have degrees and have certifications and that are not that great, and I know some of them are.
Are so like it's someone who puts the reps in. So I love to find trainers who are investing in their own education. what kind of continuum education have you done? ⁓ to maintain a certain personal training certification, we all have to do continue education every year to maintain it. Ask them what they've been doing lately. I invest a ton in my education, also my staffs, because I value that. That's something like if I'm not learning something new, one I'm probably kind of bored. ⁓ and two, what am I bringing to the table? Like I have.
Clients that have trained with me for four or five six years. If I'm not learning new information and I'm not taking the time to advance at, how can I bring a better value to them? So if your coach is getting continuing education that's going to support the clients that they're training, then you're probably in the right spot.
Heidi (26:24)
I love that.
I think and and I I love that you're willing to connect people in other places of the country because you're right. We live in this amazing web now that we can connect everybody. Sometimes people say, you have this huge network of people. How do you know all these people? I'm like, Well, mostly from different Life experiences and then there's Facebook and Instagram, which I'm not on a ton, but
I look at who I do know and I'm like, that person knows this person it's that connection. I I just had a conversation with one of my future guests who lives in England and I I was like, This is amazing
Ashley Anderson (26:57)
Well, and I think the other thing
is if I don't know, I know the right people to ask. Like, it just has become like I think we forgot how important those connections are. ⁓ I think with social media and like the changes during twenty twenty and everything else, like we just ran into a world where we forgot how to connect with people, like and see people's faces. I'm like, Hey, welcome to the gym and everyone's like well
Heidi (27:01)
Right.
Ashley Anderson (27:17)
Okay, well like why are you still coming to the gym? Like people are like, I could work out from home. I go, you won't work as hard. Like, you won't work as hard, I promise. Like there's there is there are twenty million online trainers.
Heidi (27:22)
no. I know. That is so true. Like, ooh.
Ashley Anderson (27:30)
I promise you there are like I'm a really good trainer for my online clients. Like and I work with clients remotely, but I'm a really good trainer because I spend 20 hours plus every week on the training floor working with real Life people. I've seen them move, I've seen that, and I might be like, maybe you're doing this. Let's try this and this because I have active practice. And I think sometimes when you're just doing it online, you miss some of that stuff as well.
Heidi (27:51)
Yeah, that's true. And you don't have that same energy, my older son, every time, we would talk about doing something virtual, he's like, But I need to do it face to face like it's just you just have more
more connection. It's like the same thing of doing a yoga practice at home with a video versus going to a class. It's a it's a completely different experience. And I know I work a lot harder when I'm in a class of any sort, my silver sneaker, I can always go back to that. But I mean
Ashley Anderson (28:17)
I'm just I'm just laughing because I think about doing yoga
at home and I have two dogs, and all I'm thinking about is my one dog trying to lick my face and the other dog trying to lay on me. Like that's literally, and I they're both like 15 pounds, so it's not like they're huge dogs, but like nothing's as efficient and if you're doing it in the right environment. ⁓ like if you're working from home, everybody like everyone that works from home, people that have offices work a little bit better than the people that work at their kitchen table. Like we've all worked from home at our kitchen table. Like I also can do the laundry and do the
Heidi (28:22)
Hm.
Yeah.
That's so true.
Ashley Anderson (28:47)
dishes and all that stuff, but when I have a place that I'm gonna lock myself up in and this is where I'm working, like I'll get up and maybe like get a snack or that kind of stuff. Like it's just when you're in the right environment for the activity, the activity becomes better and it becomes the focus and you get all of these things. Like it's very easy if you were doing a workout at home, like how many things could distract you?
Heidi (29:06)
I heard the laundry go off and then my son comes home from college for the summer and like, you know I see I can feel the heat in the door
Ashley Anderson (29:12)
And that and then like maybe your workout
space is moved because he put you know his couch is in the middle of your workout space. Like there's so many, there's so many excuses. And like because I've been doing like excuses is the correct word. We can call them challenges, but really when it comes down to it, they're excuses. Do you what when you walk into the gym with the excuses? You don't want to do it. But do it for 10 minutes. If you really don't have it, after 10 minutes, you can leave. No one ever regrets the workout they do. Never once have I had a single client tell
Heidi (29:16)
⁓ yeah.
⁓ amen.
Ashley Anderson (29:42)
Me that they they wish they didn't come today. I have a client's walk in, they're I'm not really vibing today. I cool, let's do your warm up. if the end of your warm-up you aren't ready to train, you can leave, we'll reschedule your session. I have absolutely no problem with that. You tried, it wasn't working, cool. Never a single time has anyone left. Like
Heidi (29:58)
Yeah. You
gotta get over that an inertia and and I don't mean just for the initial that particular workout or that particular day. It's that inertia that sets in when your body doesn't feel good, your brain fog, you feel heavy, you know, all the things like perimenopause and and all the things and you know, and men men have hormone shifts too and and weight gain or whatever it is, and then
we just get stuck and like, this little bit of whatever it is, the walk around the block or whatever, it's really not gonna make that much of a difference. But that's just it. It does. It's all those little increments. But getting over that hump is similar to, you know, getting into the gym and ⁓ one of my girlfriends and I we used to talk to each other before a particular yoga class. I said, Are you going? I don't know, are you going? And ⁓
Then we got tougher on each other. We're like, no, you gotta go. And then I said to her one time, I said, Well, have you ever regretted going? Nobody walks out of there and says, Damn it, I can't believe I worked out. Crap, I hate that I had to go to that yoga class. I mean, never, never, ever
Ashley Anderson (31:08)
I mean and is
I mean it's yoga. Who regrets going to yoga? Like d doesn't everybody just feel better? All it takes is one shavasana and everything has changed about your Life.
Heidi (31:11)
Yeah, but even
Exactly, exactly.
And I would say the same for working out. I as long as you're not hurting yourself,
So Ashley, I appreciate you taking the time today to go over just the necessity of taking care of our bodies and in in ways that support living our best Life, our longest Life, being able to move into our sixties, seventies, and eighties and do all of those things. So if you would stick around, we're going to continue this conversation in another episode and we're going to talk about
some specific things like what can you actually do when you're just starting out so that you don't get hurt and how our fitness and food needs change over time. we may just be revealing the secrets of the fountain of youth. So stay tuned.
Heidi (32:09)
So at the end of this episode, we were talking about things that we can actually do, ways to ⁓ promote the fountain of youth, if you will, and prevent getting hurt, really. And that conversation will be in a future episode.
I also wanted to mention that I brought up the topic of creatine and we never got to circle back around to that, but that will come out in a future episode as well because I believe it's a really important supplement to consider for all ages, but especially if you're in midlife or beyond. And I wanted to get Ashley's take on that because she is so educated and experienced in the area of fitness overall, but also nutrition, which is a huge part of fitness and gut health.
and longevity. So that will definitely be a conversation coming up in the future.
But right now I will be posting an extended bonus conversation with Ashley as we continue chatting over in the groupie level of Patreon or if you are an Apple subscriber. And the topic we're going to be covering is hips and knees. Yeah. So if you struggle here, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
It's not a long conversation, but let me tell you, I learned a lot in that less than ten minute bonus conversation.
Heidi (33:30)
it's been a couple of weeks since I did a patron shout out, and this is for all of the patrons who joined the Evolving Together Patreon, either as a free member, a groupie, or a collaborator, which is the top tier level. And you all know who you are. So I'd like to say thank you to Mod Abdul, Devra Amy, Ashley, and Rita.
Thank you so much for joining the Evolving Together Patreon. Your support means absolutely everything.
Heidi (34:07)
If you want to become a patron, the link is in the show notes. And you can join as a free member or as a groupie and get the extended bonus conversations along with the mindful midlife moments. Or if you are a collaborator, the top tier level, you will also get
to submit your own story or a laugh out loud moment. And you also have access to the girls' night in episodes with the very intimate conversations I have with my girlfriends. So if any of that appeals to you, consider joining Patreon. Again, the link is in the show notes. You can also join as an Apple subscriber
if you enjoyed this episode and you know somebody else who would also enjoy it, would you please consider sharing this? And if you would, also leave a five-star review. that really means everything to us, and it helps this podcast reach even more people. So thank you in advance.
And if I don't see you over in Patreon or as an Apple subscriber, that's fine. I'll just see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening.
Heidi (35:11)
and now for the disclaimer. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended as professional advice. The views expressed are our own and should not be taken as medical, legal, or financial guidance. always consult a qualified professional regarding your specific situation.
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