Sustaining Strong: How Strength Training Empowers Women with Self Confidence, Resilience, and Mental Wellbeing - with Sarah Brelowski (part 2)

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:00  

Welcome to The Executive Coach for Moms Podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host, Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic and certified executive coach. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:27  

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am excited to continue this conversation with Sarah Brelowski, certified personal trainer, mom and consultant. And if you did not hear part one, go back and listen to last week's episode. We learned all about Sarah's journey to Personal Training and Fitness, and today we're going to learn about strength training and fitness, why it's important to Sarah, why it's important for all of us to be thinking about so I'm very excited to continue this conversation. So welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Brelowski  1:02  

Hi. Thanks for having me back. So glad. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:04  

So I loved hearing about your story, and kind of like how you came to personal training and last time we learned that you have been in the gym since college, it's been a long time spent in lots of different sports, including soccer, including strength training, Jazzercise, running, TRX, yoga, so many different sports and modalities of being fit. And I just want to hear about what is it about strength training that you love so much?

Sarah Brelowski  1:42  

So for me, I have my why, why I go to the gym, which is, one is to prevent having a fusion, and number two is so I don't have to ask my husband to help me move my furniture. The strength training satisfies those two whys for me, okay, but in reality, I think I have learned that I have some sensory seeking behaviors in me, and I think I have somewhat of an addiction to strength training because it calms my nervous system. I think for a long time I did it just you hear people talk about like for their mental health. And I think when I lift heavy and I put that strain on my body, my body calms down. So without putting that pressure on my nervous system, my body becomes very unregulated, and I become very frazzled. So it's kind of a situation where it makes me feel better, not just to be stronger, but to make me a better person.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:49  

Interesting, I know you have all kinds of certifications and trainings, and so I'm just going to read those really quick so everyone knows how qualified Sarah is today. So Sarah is an AIDS group fitness instructor in Issa Certified Personal Training. She has a women's coaching Specialist Certification, a pre and postnatal coaching certification. She is TRX qualified and Kaiser certified. And I think whenever we first started working together, if you didn't tune in last week, Sarah is my personal trainer, and has been for the last seven months. And I think one of the things that I really was happy to learn about you whenever we first started working together is that you've done some different trainings for women specifically. So I am curious about tell us what you know about why is it important for women to be strength training, what's different about women versus men, of like, how we should show up to the gym or think about being fit or strong?

Sarah Brelowski  3:55  

I'll take it back to one of the most impactful statements that I heard, and it was that the majority of what we know about strength training today was developed when Arnold Schwarzenegger era of bodybuilding, and as I have worked through my journey of strength training, that wasn't what I aspired to be. So that was never my ideal physique. That's not my purpose in doing this. So I think what we've seen in the last few years is there's been a lot of conversations about women and specifically how to train and as I age and I get into the perimenopause, menopause, post menopause years, women have very different needs than men. Shock, right? But we really haven't been having those conversations. There haven't been the voices to speak up. Even today, you'll hear women count your calories and progress overload, and that's all you need, which, it's not necessarily accurate. And what I like to point to when people talk about strength training, because a lot of times we refer to like the Jane Fonda era of the tapes, Richard Simmons, right, that was what our moms might have been brought up in. So that's what we were taught, and it was nice to move. But if we think about our bodies, every year, we lose bones and muscles and parts of our body just by aging, where I think it's .06 to .04% up until 70, and then it's like .09 to .06, something like that. Just naturally, you're going to lose it. If you're going to start from 10 and get to zero, you only got 10, right? So you're going to quickly degrade. But what if you can change that 10 to a 20, then you can give yourself more. You know that your body is going to lose it, so why wouldn't we build it up so that we can enjoy our grandchildren, so that I can still move furniture so I don't have to ask my husband for help? Why wouldn't we do those things to prepare ourselves for the later years? And that's really what a lot of my philosophy drives from, is that we've been so focused as a society on the here and now and oh, I'm too old to deadlift, that we forget that what we do now is preparing ourselves for our 60s and 70s and plus years.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  6:42  

Yeah. Yeah, I think about that a lot. I think my motivation has changed quite a bit in terms of how I think about being fit or working out. I used to do a lot of cardio and cut calories just so that I could like, look a certain way. And I think at this moment in my life. I'm more like, I just want to be able to, like, pick up my grandkids, and right now, pick up my kid. And you know, when I'm 80, I want to be able to not have to rely on someone else to do everything for me. I want to be able to live on my own, and, like you said, like, lift things up and be independent. And so it's a very different motivation, I think, than, like, trying to look like, not that I ever wanted to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but like, look a certain way. It's like, that's more of, like, a nice side effect, but not the primary motivation.

Sarah Brelowski  7:33  

Yeah. And what was great is, I've had some personal trainers, and I've had a lot of people in the gym that I've talked to, and I think, because I am on that tomboy kind of line, lifting heavy never scared me, because, as the saying goes, if a boy can do it, why can't I? And I was lucky to work out train in a gym that empowered women. It was one of the greatest blessings. I don't think I recognized at the time, but I was in a gym that treated women probably better than men. Don't stand there and count their reps and like continue to ask them, when are you done with this set? No creepy comments. When I was pregnant, I worked out up until two days before delivery, I was over my due date, and not once did someone say, why are you here? What are you doing? They were like, take pictures of yourself. You're going to want to remember this. They just asked that I didn't go into labor or have my water break in the gym, but to be in an environment that was encouraging the strength training, I want everyone to feel as empowered and comfortable and confident that I was. Now if you walked into that gym, you would be intimidated. It's just how the gym is, but it was the best for giving me the confidence and allowing me to take up space and do what I wanted to do without judgment or without hearing the comments. Because I think that Jim bro culture can really scare women away from strength training. I think it's changing, but it's still definitely there.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  9:21  

Yeah. I mean, I think about our gym, there's way more in that strength training room. And actually, I thought about a few times like, I should go live on a day that I don't have a session with Sarah, and then I'm like, Oh, I don't know. I've never, like done that before, gone into a weight room by myself. It had never occurred to me. So I'm curious about what your philosophy is your goal. What is it that you want to achieve for maybe, like, passing that philosophy on to other women? What do you think about like when you show up to the gym as a group fitness instructor or as a personal trainer? 

Sarah Brelowski  9:58  

Yeah, I want my members, my clients, to feel welcome, to feel like they belong. I want them to have the positive mindset. I don't want anyone to come in and feel worse about themselves. And I want you to have the confidence and believe in yourself that you can go in and you can go into any gym and get a workout in. And I want people to believe, and I've said this so many times in my classes, because they are predominantly women. I want you to take up space. I want you to feel confident, to get some dumbbells, to get a barbell, and stand there and not let anyone make you feel less because you pay the same membership as them.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  10:44  

Yeah, I love that, and I think going back to our last conversation about taking up space and the importance of it, so it makes sense, like you learned how to do that for yourself, and that you would want to pass that along to others as well, especially to other women. So one of the stats that I remember hearing at some point actually, I interviewed Miranda here on the podcast a while back, and she is a competitive power lifter, and she talked about that starting at 40. Every 10 years, we lose like 10% of our muscle mass if we don't do anything. You were talking about losing percentages. So let's say that there are women who are listening to this right now who have never lifted weight in their lives. Like, what do we need to do, maybe at a bare minimum, as busy working moms, what do we need to do to prevent that from happening?

Sarah Brelowski  11:35  

I would caution saying prevent because it will happen naturally. But what can we do to try to counteract some of it? Okay, I would say, stop lifting the pretty colored weights. They are not going to get you the muscle mass. They're not going to help you maintain what you have. I think we were as young adults, and this is what I try to communicate to all my members, you are not going to look super ripped, super jacked by lifting heavy. That's not how it works, unless you're probably taking some extra supplements and you're increasing your calories tremendously. You're just not going to fall into that. So for me, what I try to stress to people, you need to lift heavy enough that you are shocking your nervous system. So what does that mean? That means you're getting close to failure. Now there's been some research studies that have come out traditionally, we would think failure one rep, one rep, max. Maybe you're doing two to four reps, and that's getting you to failure. And what the studies are saying is you can do 15 reps, as long as your 15 is getting you closer to failure. So if you were to do 17, you wouldn't be able to do it. That's going to work you the same as doing six reps, but eight would be failure. So working your muscles to almost failure is what you're going to need to do. They also recommend,, the science world, jumping. If you jump 10 minutes three times a week, you can grow up to like 40% of your bone back. It's this crazy study on preventing like osteoporosis, and it doesn't, it doesn't include running, unfortunately, but if you do plyometric type exercises, it can help you rebuild your bone because you're shocking your nervous system, and your nervous system is like, oh, we have processes we need to do. It kicks them off. And one of those processes is to rebuild your bone because of the demand on your nervous system. So I think a lot of times, what we get in the habit of is how we've grown up, because women haven't really been studied, is we think, Oh, if I lift heavy, I'm going to look like a masculine man. That's not it at all. Even if you take a look at some of those CrossFit women, they're so strong, but they don't have that physique, right? They're not overly manly, they're toned and they're strong, and they are working purposely to get that so I think women need to stop being afraid of how their physique will change, and they need to be stopped being afraid of lifting more than those pretty colored weights, because those aren't going to do much for you.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  14:44  

Yeah, well, I think what's interesting is, like, I was just always of the mindset that, like, I can do anything. So I remember when we first started working together, and you were like, how close are you to failure? And I was like, I don't know what that means, because I'm just going to keep going until I. Like, I'm supposed to stop, but you can do that with three pound dumbbells. I didn't realize you can't do that as much whenever you're lifting something really heavy, because you just physically can't. So I think there's been an element for me of like, I don't know, like embodiment, like learning about my body and accepting that I have limit. It's like I didn't try before, like I knew I couldn't lift heavy. In my mind, it was just like off the table, but I could lift something for as long as I needed to, right? Like, as many reps as I don't know you told me to, or some program told me to do it, like I would do it. And so I think the idea of lifting to failure. It's like, counterintuitive in a way, because it's like, what? No, I'm successful. Like, I don't fail. I don't know what that means. That is one of the thoughts that came up for me. And one of the things I was wondering is, just like, What does lifting heavy mean? I know you tell me numbers. And I'm like, Sarah, come on, be realistic.

Sarah Brelowski  16:03  

That's a really great question, and it's going to depend on the person. So if we're using the rep counts, for instance, what I can lift for six reps might be different than what you can lift for six reps. That's true. That's very true, but it's, are we getting the same demand? So are we working so that at eight reps, you and I are both at failure? So today, when you got to that last rep and you're like, I can't do another one if we both work to that same feeling, that's what heavy is to us. So there's a lot of people in the industry that will say, Oh, you lifting heavy. That means you squatting your body weight. From our last podcast together, you identified that I like to be really welcoming, and I want people to enter. If you showed up and I said, All right, if you want to be strong, we need to squat your body weight. You would have run so fast away, right? 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  17:03  

We would not be talking today.

Sarah Brelowski  17:06  

And I think that's sometimes what happens is people think, oh, heavy means I need to be squatting my body weight. I need to be benching this. I need to be doing that. And I would argue that it's a great metric to have to be able to deadlift, squat, your body weight, to bench press 75% but at the end of the day, if you're lifting something till you're almost failure, that's heavy enough for you. Because I do have clients in their 70s, and I have client in their 20s. Heavy is all relative to them. And I try really hard to impress upon people that it is not about what other people are doing. It is what you did yesterday, and so you can't compare yourself to someone else, because you may get feelings of disappointment, and that's not something I'm into. I want you to feel proud, and I want you to feel empowered, and I want you to feel confident, and comparing to numbers that are somewhat artificial, I don't think is healthy. There's someone that talks about numbers don't have power over you. They just tell you where you are, but they don't know how strong you are. They don't know how many times you've tried or how many times you failed. All it is is a gage of where you are, and that is try to impress upon people, if you're working till you're almost failure. It doesn't matter what that number is, because it doesn't own you it is a number that gives you feedback that you can make a choice on.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  18:46  

So one of the things you said is that one of the reasons why women don't lift heavy, heavy being a relative term is because we are afraid we'll bulk up and look manly. I've definitely had that fear. The other big fear that I had was that I would hurt myself. So what would you say, if that's someone's fear?

Sarah Brelowski  19:07  

I would try to find a trusted personal trainer to work with. I suggest that to everybody to get the form right. I think as most things in life, we make it more difficult than it needs to be. Keep it simple, silly, right? Find someone that can get your form right. Check you make sure you're doing things correctly. To empower you to move to lift heavy, give that confidence that, yep, your back looks good. This looks good. That looks good, so that you're not afraid to load. I would be hesitant to tell someone who's not a well trained athlete, and I use athlete in the terms anybody who's coming to the gym multiple times a week is an athlete, in my mind, that I would have them get someone to help them first, so that they can have the confidence to do it on their own. So. That they can know I'm not going to hurt myself. Because there are situations I have clients where they don't know where their weaknesses are, so they will try to squat and I can point out, like, hey, this needs worked on. That needs worked on, and that way we can load safely. So what I don't want them to do is load and then be I hurt my hip, my knees hurt. That is never my goal, and that's never what I want for any of my clients or members.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  20:31  

Yeah, I remember I had hip surgery two years ago, and in the physical therapy process after that, that was where I learned about functional strength training, which I know we do a lot, and learning about proper form, they harped so much on proper form. So when I was looking for a personal trainer, that was something that was really important to me, and something that you focus on a lot. And so to anyone who's listening, who might be looking to start strength training, for me, I find it really helpful to have, like, Sarah said, like a personal trainer, because it took that fear of injury out of it a little bit for me, because I was like, okay, this person knows what they're doing. They're gonna watch me like we talked about how important form is. And I, you know, learned that that's really important to Sarah. So then I can feel, you know, good about, like, not hurting myself. Because I think even whenever I was in my recovery from surgery, what I learned was, you know, I had been stretching so much for my hip and back pain, and my physical therapist said, like, you need like, when, when it hurts, you need to do strength training, it means that you need to build muscle there. And I had never considered that, because I thought, well, it hurts, I shouldn't strength train like I should stretch it, I should ice it, I should rest it, I should heat it. And so what I have found is actually that when it hurts, that tells me I need to strength train. And so I think my fear of hurting myself has gone down quite a bit because I realized that actually what hurts me is to not do it. It hurts me probably more to not do it than to do it. But for everyone listening, Sarah works at the Y and that's where I go in personal training, the pricing is very accessible. I think that was important. So I really appreciate that, like the why makes it accessible, and to have it ongoing, because I really enjoy having someone there all the time and having an appointment on my calendar where I can't just be like, Oh no, not going today, because I actually have an appointment that I have set up with another person, and I'm paying them, so I'm going to go and do it, and it has made it so that I show up more consistently. That has been, like, a huge success factor for me, to staying consistent and to continuing to, like, build more strength. 

Sarah Brelowski  22:58  

You made some good points. And I would say, if you're looking for a personal trainer, before you go out searching know why you're doing it and what you want to focus on. So I think when you and I had our first discussion, I'm very much functional, movement focused. I want people to move with strength. So I like to incorporate different ways, different modalities, into it, rather than you have the trainers that will just be barbell focused, or just do dumbbells or just do machines, and so to have an idea of what you want, and then to date your CPT, right? But you're not going to mesh with everybody, so to meet them, to make sure that you are aligned. Because what I don't want for people is they show up and they they start a session, and they're on two different planets, and then it's not the right fit, and so you start to feel dejected, and I can't do this and you start those negative thoughts, and that's not what anyone wants for someone. So I do think it's important to make sure you have an idea of what you want. How do you want to strength train? Do you want to power lift? Do you want to just get strong and functional movements that are going to help you in life? Like I think the one time we were doing farmer carries, and I was like, pretend like you're at Trader Joe's carrying in your groceries to make it make sense for you, so that when you come you know you're getting benefits, not just in the gym, but outside. Because I think that also helps people show up for themselves. So if you have a trainer that likes that functional aspect to make it relatable to you, so that you can feel your life is easier, you'll feel better about your investment, and you'll be able to see the progress, rather than if you just on a bench, and yeah, your bench is going up. But how does that translate? Into your outside of gym life.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  25:04  

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I think those wins of being able to carry all the Trader Joe's grocery bags at the same time in one trip, or being able to lift my daughter, which I hadn't done for a while after my surgery, because I was afraid it hurt myself. And, you know, learning like the proper form and and all that. Yeah, it just makes life more fun. Those women does. So Sarah, is there anything else that you would want to share that I haven't asked you, that you feel like it's important for women to know? 

Sarah Brelowski  25:34  

I would love women to know that they have a place at the gym that they can own that space, that there are resources now coming out to help women to understand, hey, we're not little men. When you start going through that transition from perimenopause menopause to post menopause, we got to do things differently, and the research is telling us to do different get that nervous system stimulated. One thing we didn't talk about is sprint interval training, and it's something that I was doing the last couple months. And what sprint interval training is, 10, 20/32, intervals, all out, everything you have, and then you fully recover, and you only do it three or four times. It's 30/40, minute workout, but the science says when we enter those years, that is the most effective cardio to help your body. So I know you like to run, I like to do endurance rides. We can both do those things, but we know that that might not be giving us the biggest benefit, but this sprint interval training will help our microbiome, which will help us with some of the symptoms. It will help us lose the fat, because in this stage of life, it's not just calories in and out. It's getting our hormones right so that we can be healthy. One of the most powerful things I read was you have to be healthy to get healthy. And I think so often we think calories in, calories out, and then we'll lose weight, and we'll get to the ideal body size, body shape, whatever it may be. But when that doesn't work, we there's not a lot of resources to go to to tell you, like you know what it might be. Your hormones are out. Maybe you're starting to enter this phase of your life. And there are things now that they're studying that we know work. There's supplements that they're saying creatine is the most studied supplement we have. And I just, I think, last month, two months ago, a paper came out a peer reviewed journal that it's helping with Alzheimer's patience and memory. It's good for women to help recover, to help with our brain fog. And when we think creatine, I think of the big guys at my gym that had biceps as big as my head, and that is not what it is. So I encourage women to go out and to start advocating for themselves, start researching and to not get frustrated, be where you are. So often, if we talk about failing at the gym, I purposefully put some of my people in positions to fail, because if you're not failing, how do you know where you are, if you're not trying anything new, how are you changing yourself? And so I think it's a great place to learn the failure, so that when you walk out of those walls and you do something at work or something happens at home, and you feel like you have failed, you got practice in a safe space in the gym, and you're like, I'm gonna dust myself off and start again. And I think so many lessons happen inside those four walls that can transfer out, but you just have to be willing to go in there and know that you deserve to be in that space.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  28:59  

I love it, and what is your saying? So are today strong tomorrow?

Sarah Brelowski  29:03  

That's it, yep. So let me know how you feel tomorrow.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  29:09  

Oh, well, Sarah, thank you so much for joining me for these multiple conversations. I really appreciate you and your philosophy, and I'm just so glad that you live in the same place as me, so you can be my Creator. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  29:22  

Thank you for having me. I'm really glad we got a chance to do this.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  29:26  

Likewise. All right. Well, thank you so much Sarah, and thank you so much everyone for tuning in. I appreciate you all, and we'll see you all next week. Bye. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  29:34  

If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I'd love to invite you to check out The Executive Mom Reset. It's my six month coaching program for ambitious, success driven, career focused women who are ready to stop surviving and start thriving. Together, we'll tackle the stress, guilt and overwhelm that come with being a high achieving executive mom. You'll learn how to set boundaries, prioritize what truly matters, and build the confidence to show up powerfully at work, at home, and for yourself. Head on over to coachleanna.com right now to schedule a free discovery call. We'll spend an hour talking about where you are now, what you want to create, and how I can help you get there, because every woman deserves to live the life of her dreams. Let's create yours together.