Is there anything in that current framework that we've walked through that you would want to tweak or add or modify for that person?

I think everything we've covered really touches on it.

The only thing is kind of going back to what I talked about earlier, like strength is the really, really big rock there with all of those things.

But we do have some trials in menopausal women looking at like jump landing training or small jump training or hop training or some sort of acute plyometrics or whatever that looks like training in conjunction with the strength training for improving bone density and bone outcomes.

And I know a lot of women get hesitant for that because maybe they have pelvic floor issues or knee issues or things like that.

That's why I really emphasize that the strength training is going to be the bigger rock in that component fair.

But that is something that can complement that, add that, I like that.

And so if we can find something that includes even some of this, but we're able to do it for months and years to come, then we're getting the real benefits.

Can you clear that one up for us?

Yeah, so this is really confusing for people listening.

So bear with me for a second here.

So fat burning and or in the sense of in the lab as scientists, it's actually called fat oxidation.

And essentially when your body is utilizing substrate, which is a fancy words for burning carbs faster protein, it is selectively alternating mostly between carbs and fats.

Sometimes we use protein, but we don't really want that to happen.

Your body doesn't really want that to happen either.

So am I still contributing or do I then need to do some of what we call this zone two work and be very deliberate about it?

Yeah.

So be it, right? But I think people, if they're trying to optimize or be a little more specific in their training- to train multiple characteristics in their training plan but then that's where women get overwhelmed because they're like i can't do this all the time and i'm like you don't you do it in cycles you do it across the year you do it across time so you know for me i like alter altering cycles of like general physical preparedness is one of them where you're just kind of developing a general base of fitness right you're training a lot of characteristics you're getting a good base of strength a good base of hypertrophy maybe a little bit of faster moving stuff And then you go through cycles that are more strength specific.

Maybe we're doing higher weights, lower reps.

Maybe we're doing a more hypertrophy cycle.

We're doing more reps, less weight.

Maybe we're doing a little bit more of an athletic-y power development cycle.

We're training characteristics that are fast.

golden

How did content start to play a role for you? And how did you kind of start building that side of it? And was it always sort of meant to be sort of a flywheel to bring people into the business? Like, talk to me about your content journey a little bit more.

Yeah.

So my content journey has two sides.

One, I got stuff to say and I can't shut up and I like to talk about science.

That's part of it.

A lot of my content for years was just like driven by like what am I learning about right now? What is on my mind? What am I thinking about? And I think doing that while going through grad school, my postdoc, and then now professionally, there's a lot more strategy.

And there has been for a while things – and we can talk about my business strategy – But to one part of that, and I think this is where a lot of people miss it, is like I'm interesting and I have interesting things to say.

Are you refining at this stage? Are you thinking about unlocking a whole different level of stuff? Like, how do you think about your own business now?

Mm-hmm.

And I was like, "Yeah, yeah." Like, it is...

And it's no different.

My husband made a really good point when he was actually eavesdropping on a podcast interview I did the other day.

He also has a PhD in this field.

And I was talking to somebody about how, like, the new generation's obsessed, obsessed with skinny talk and this and thinness.

And he goes, "Isn't that every generation?" I was like, "That's a good point." I know that the current wave of perimenopausal/menopausal women are like, "The '80s and '90s and early 2000s are brutal," but my millennials are like, "The early 2000s are brutal." And then now we're seeing it again.

but it's not the actual capacity that decreases.

Mm

... how fast you're moving that.

That's one way that I see that.

Also, like, the same weight or the same output might be an effort level higher than it normally is, or you might have to drop weight to do the same perceived level of effort.

So you're kind of having to adjust to that because you're not able to produce the same amount of work or force in your training session.

Those are a little bit more objective, so people can say, "Hey, like, that is happening to me." And that's not necessarily always a bad thing, right? Like, when I'm peaking and training for a race, I just expect that that's gonna happen.

It's not inherently bad.

And then what happens?

Thank you.

Who's in perimenopause or post-menopause in the ultra scene? You don't know yet.

Yeah, some of you, it's a little, it's a little confusing.

Now, how many of you are like me, looking at these women thinking, "I wanna be you in 10, 15, 20 years," right? It's amazing the longevity in our sport, and even the women at the front now are going into their 40s and beyond and still doing amazing things.

And that really is a nod to the longevity of our sport.

But menopause, as many of you who are in it know, come with a lot of physiological changes that are very frustrating, right? So if the gaps in sports science in women is small, the gaps in menopausal athletes is even smaller.

So I'm not gonna act like I'm coming up here today with magic solutions and answers 'cause we just don't have that at this time.

And also thinking about how I should best fuel my body to do running but also try to build some strength.

And yeah, I'd love to get your thoughts on, on that kind of general thesis, and also how you kind of think about the relationship between volume and intensity when you're programming volume.

Yeah.

And I realize I totally before didn't answer the question to zone three, so I'll tie that into this here, too.

I just talked about the zone one.

Um, similarly with zone three not being bad, I think there's this idea that, like, it's zone two or it's harmful.

Like, it's either three versus, f- like three is like the no-man zone.

But I just trained for my first road marathon last year.

What would you do to help that person build that bigger base of zone two? And then once they become a little bit more trained, does that advice change?

Mm-hmm.

But, like, it is really sad because-We start to lose muscle starting in our 30s at, like, 3 to 8% per decade if we don't train it.

And then, you know, bone density is something that a lot of women don't think about until they're in their 40s and 50s and estrogen starts declining, and it does have a direct effect on bone loss.

But, you know, if you spent your youn- your younger years just chronically dieting and yo-yo dieting and undereating or not really training, you might be going in there with, like, low bone density to begin with.

Young-- Especially if you ever struggled with, like, low energy availability or you were a high endurance athlete or you had, um, you know, relative energy deficiency in sport or anything like that during that course, bone's really hard to rebuild back.

And I just, those are the things that I care more about in women.

And I know I'm kinda going on a tangent here, but when we think about sex differences, like, this is actually where most of the concern should come from, this low energy availability, bone loss, muscle loss that happens with undereating, chronic dieting, excessive exercise with not enough fuel for it.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

But, like, that is still the underlying function of your body's system.

But I think a lot of people dismiss the fact that, like, okay, let me back up.

The data right now does not show this direct perfect story of hormones drop, metabolism drops.

We just don't see it.

We don't see this drastic drop in metabolic rate in most people, men and women, until the 60s and beyond.

We don't see...

Yes

So to then be turned around and think something different, that's actually amazing.

No, and then what happened is I was really inspired by, like, a lot of the push for cycle syncing training that was out a few years ago, um, when it was really early on, and I was like, "Oh, okay, like may..." And that helped me formulate my hypothesis.

Like, I pulled it from, you know, public stuff that I was seeing, and, uh, then I started to read the literature more and get into the science and write my lit review, and then take my data and analyze my data, and it was like, hang on, this is not really the story that people are being sold and told, and then my data was just null across the board.

It was like, oh, this isn't the menstrual cycle or birth control at all, at least in my, in my data, right? Like, my study is one study, but that was confirmed by a lot of data that I was looking at or just the data isn't as concrete and clear as social media makes it seem, right? Like, social media paints this picture that there's this one size fits all 28-day cycle, and everyone's phases are the exact same length, and they happen at the exact same time, and they should be doing the exact same thing.

And when you really do look at the science, you know, if you're, if you're a woman listening to this and you don't know how your menstrual cycle works, like, I really encourage you to, like, f- first start there because that's where I think a lot of the cycle syncing confusion comes from, is that you don't actually even really know what's going on with your cycle or when it's happening or your timing, and so that's the first place to start to even know if your cycle's impacting your performance or your training at all.

So the one size fits all idea that everyone has a 28-day cycle is not true.

It really, really varies, especially when you look at studies.

Yeah.

What do you think are the, the main sources of confusion or things that kind of stand in the way of a lot of women participating in resistance training?

I actually read a paper on this recently where they, like, surveyed women and it's obviously an incomplete study but this based off even my experience with training women and kind of trying to convert them to the dark side of weight training is I think a lot of women, one, they were never shown how.

Like we see the statistics of young girls dropping out of s- out of sport, um, because of their body changes or not having access to things.

I think, you know, a lot of women never got that like teenage boy, football player, wrestler, basketball player, dirty ball, get the gym type phase in their life where they really got to go in the gym.

And I had that as a teenage girl and that changed my life but I think that so many women didn't have that and they didn't find any sort of, you know, to build off what Lauren said, reason to work out other than how do I become smaller, thinner, especially this, I think this current generation of midlife women.

That's what I'm hearing time and time again, I'm sure you are as well, is like, "Well, I've been told my whole life to be smaller so it's hard for me to get past that." So they were never introduced to strength as a tool for performance or to become better or challenge yourself like she mentioned but also they were only ever then introduced to fitness as a way to be smaller, lose weight, burn calories.

All of those things was what the messaging that women were given and I really, really want to s- pause here to say that so many people say that like exercise and sports science is the reason this is an issue.

So for each of those kind of movement patterns, based on that program, you'd end up with like six sets per movement pattern a week.