Why and how I started lifting heavy things, Part 2

Moving on from a personal trainer, joining a gym, and the mental heath benefits.

ICYMI, in Part 1, I briefly explained my relationship with exercise and what led me to start strength training. I also shared the equipment I got, my routine, and what did and didn’t work for me initially.

Today, I’ll share some more key learnings from my first 18 months while I was working my beloved personal trainer,

Anne Reuss

, why I decided to move on from her and go solo, joined a gym, and how getting stronger has helped me walk through this difficult spring.

Biggest learnings from the first 1.5 years

• Proper form, so I don’t injure myself, and have the confidence to do all the basic kinds of movement with weights: push, pull, hinge, squat, and carry.

• The ideal number of strength training days per week for me is 3-4, but—as I said in Part 1—I worked up to that. For the first six months, I stuck to two workouts a week.

• How to work with my energy levels based on my cycle. I have drastic spikes and dips throughout the month, and “pushing through” doesn’t work.

• I need a long-ish warm-up, never less than ten minutes, usually more like 15-18 mins.

• Recovery days are key, but low-intensity movement helps me recover best (versus doing nothing). Walking is my go-to.

• I have to eat something before I strength train. Thanks to intermittent fasting bullshit and other diet-natured conditioning, I had trained my body to put off eating until 10 or 11 in the morning (I eat dinner early, between 5-6:30 pm). I’d ride that two-coffee caffeine high, and since I work out in the morning, I would almost always do my (cardio) without eating. This was generally fine, though it didn’t do me any favors later in the day, but once I started lifting, it didn’t work anymore; I had no energy during my workouts and didn’t make any gains. It took a while, but I’ve trained myself to eat something before working out, even if it’s small. Makes the world of difference.

• On that note, I learned how to fuel my body better overall. Dr. Stacy Sims' work completely changed my perspective on eating and exercise in middle age. The biggest takeaways: We have to do specific types of exercise to get the stimulus we need to gain/maintain muscle at this stage of life (long cardio sessions ain’t it), I was way undereating for my activity level, and carbs are not the enemy. Her book Next Level is a great starting point, and this episode about women’s health on the Mindbodygreen Podcast, and this one about nutrition and exercise tips for women on The Proof, are great.

• Eating less and working out more is not the answer, especially in middle age. It throws our body into a famine state and increases our cortisol, which makes us gain weight, lose sleep, and feel like crap overall. Most of us are undereating. Stacy’s work gets into this in detail.

Going Solo

Right around the new year, I felt ready to stop working with a personal trainer. As much as I love

Anne Reuss

and will forever be indebted to her, I was ready to do my own thing. I had 18 months of excellent training and a full workout set-up at home and needed to allocate the expense elsewhere.

For a month or so, I did Peloton strength workouts (Rebecca is my favorite!) and supplemented them with additional exercises when I felt like it. I also traveled quite a bit in January and February and had so much fun with all the extra equipment in the hotel gyms.

Then, my relationship ended.

Joining a Gym

When I moved earlier this year, I brought some kettlebells and dumbbells with me, and of course, my Peloton bike, but there wasn’t enough room to recreate the whole setup in my new place. I did some solo workouts at home for a couple of weeks, but everything felt flat and lonely. One unseasonable warm Sunday in March, on a walk with my friend, we passed by a gym with their garage door open. I pulled my friend in to take a look.

The space felt straight out of the 80s, with old-school equipment, heavy metal blasting, the clink-clank sound of weights being racked, and Arnold Schwarzenegger posters on the wall. One of the owners greeted me immediately and told me the deal: they program strength workouts every weekday and conditioning workouts on weekends. They repeat each week’s programming over the course of a month, with increased intensity as the weeks progress. When a new month hits, we get new programming. The owners are there to answer questions and support as needed.

One of the workouts. I love that I can decipher this shit.

I signed up immediately.

Here are my first push-ups in the new gym. It had been a while!

I was nervous the first time I went in, but after the first couple of times, I felt right at home. When I tell you I love it there: I LOVE IT THERE SO MUCH. The place I lived before was remote, and I sometimes wouldn’t interact with people for days. I didn’t realize the impact this had on me. Seeing other humans when I walked into the gym made me teary for weeks. The music! All the machines! The little board where I mark off my workouts!

So satisfying.

The best part was that had I not spent the prior year and a half working with Anne, getting comfortable with weights, and getting stronger, I would’ve never joined this gym. I would’ve thought about it but never walked in. It’s funny that I’m a woman in her mid-forties who has ten years of hard work in recovery, runs a company, writes books, leads hundreds of people in retreats, stands on stages, and parents a teenager (!), and yet walking into a local gym or joining a new group of women for a book club can make me feel thirteen-years-old all over again. I’m saying this because maybe you beat up on yourself for being scared off by seemingly small things, too, thinking you’re the only one. You’re not.

Which leads me to…

The Mental Health Benefits

Strength training has changed the way I move through the world. In a way, it feels like sobriety felt in the early days, like I had a secret superpower I carried with me everywhere: a confidence, an edge, an inner strength. I stand differently. I walk differently. I wear my clothes differently. My body has physically changed in some ways, although not drastically, but my scaffolding is so much sturdier. Physical strength has manifested into emotional strength and a certain inner frequency.

I can’t help but look at the time spent building up this strength as both contributing to and preparing for this season. Lifting all those months strengthened my mind and sharpened my thinking; I created a reservoir of power, activation, and trust to use when it mattered. I have a more organized presence—a swift intentionality in my words and actions. I’m more integrated. Underneath the chaotic waves of this change, there is an abiding ocean of calm and okayness.

I don’t credit it all to lifting heavy things; it’s the accumulation of nearly ten years of recovery and life. But this practice has undoubtedly deepened and fortified all of it. Plus, it’s fun. It’s so fun!

It’s good for me to feel like I’ve accomplished something tough every day, especially in the past few months, when even the basic things have felt exhausting. Showing up to the gym always gives me that feeling. Some of my friends feel this way about cold dipping. Maybe it’s something else for you, but whatever it is, I think it’s important to push against our edges regularly—to be reminded of the aliveness and possibility inside us. As John O’Donohue said, “The normal way never leads home.”

Thank you for being here! It means so much. xo

Laura

You are reading Love Story, a weekly newsletter about relationships, recovery, and writing from Laura McKowen. Laura is the founder of The Luckiest Club, an international sobriety support community, and the bestselling author of two books, We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life and Push Off from Here: 9 Essential Truths to Get You Through Sobriety (and Everything Else).

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Read Part 1:

Why and how I started lifting heavy things, Part 1