Discover your "why" behind the iron and sweat— today Leanne reveals the top three strategies that have been game-changers in her commitment to health and wellness.
From making self-care a sacred ritual to scheduling workouts as you would any pivotal meeting, these insights promise to revolutionize how you approach your ambitions, ensuring you show up for yourself, day in and day out. Key Takeaways From Today's Show:
Flip the script on your fitness routine
Break the mould of monotonous workouts,
Infusing your exercise with creativity and camaraderie.
Hear how I've turned training sessions into my own playground, whether that's by leveraging the wilderness for a workout or inviting a friend to squat. The secret sauce? Community.
There's nothing quite like the shared energy of a workout buddy or the collective wisdom of fellow Strength Seekers to keep you accountable and inspired. So let's connect on this adventure together, building big biceps, AND bonds that bolster our mental fortitude and zest for life.
Discover your "why" behind the iron and sweat— today Leanne reveals the top three strategies that have been game-changers in her commitment to health and wellness.
From making self-care a sacred ritual to scheduling workouts as you would any pivotal meeting, these insights promise to revolutionize how you approach your ambitions, ensuring you show up for yourself, day in and day out. Key Takeaways From Today's Show:
Flip the script on your fitness routine
Break the mould of monotonous workouts,
Infusing your exercise with creativity and camaraderie.
Hear how I've turned training sessions into my own playground, whether that's by leveraging the wilderness for a workout or inviting a friend to squat. The secret sauce? Community.
There's nothing quite like the shared energy of a workout buddy or the collective wisdom of fellow Strength Seekers to keep you accountable and inspired. So let's connect on this adventure together, building big biceps, AND bonds that bolster our mental fortitude and zest for life.
Welcome to Uplift you, creating strong bodies and mind. Get ready to power up your day with practical strength training tools, inspiring stories and build resilience of body and mind. It's time to uplift you, together with your host, leanne Knox. Welcome to episode four. Before I begin, I'd really like to thank you all for your support of my first three episodes. That was a big one for me. It was like stepping on that world stage all over again. So thank you so much, and if you love listening to me, I would love it if you could share it with your friends to help lift them up as well. When I finished the last episode, I went into how LK Strength Coach was born.
Speaker 1:
Before I get into this episode, where I'm going to give you three top tips to keep showing up for yourself, I want to let you in on a really exciting project that I've been working on alongside what I'm doing now. So in saying that, I'd like to firstly ask you the question are you trying something new? Are you trying something out of your comfort zone? Do you find yourself asking am I ever going to be good enough? Will I ever lose this weight? Will I ever learn this skill or get that dream job? What I've learned over the past few months where some of those questions plagued me also, believe me, is the answer to those questions lie in your why. Why are those things so important to you? And if you know the answer to that, where are the gaps? Do you need someone to help you guide your way, someone who knows what the foundations are, so they can give you those stepping stones? These days, it's really hard to know who to listen to. There are so many people out there, but are those people that are out there, are they teaching you how to master the mundane, how they can help you really put those stepping stones in and commit to yourself and your goals? Now, the people who helped me funnily enough, or maybe not so were my people that I had a community with. That. I had a community with people that I was turning up to coach each day, and in establishing my weightlifting club, I wanted to make sure that I was giving those people the foundations so that they could move forward with confidence and clarity. So they were showing up for the best versions of themselves, being as strong and resilient and being capable of anything they set their mind to. So I've spent the last few months creating a way for each and every person that I work with where they can create this foundation with confidence and strength, where they can share their wins and their struggles and their frustrations. Where they can build other people up and build themselves up in the same process. And this community is called Strength Seekers. If you want to know more about it, go have a look in my show notes. I'm so excited that I can provide this opportunity for my community.
Speaker 1:
Now onto today's episode. I'm going to give you my three top takeaways, as both a lifter and a coach, for helping you to turn up for yourself and do the hard things in life. I know you would have heard the analogy. The hardest thing is to get that ball rolling and if I relate this to strength, think about a heavy deadlift. The hardest thing often is to pull that bar off the ground Like seriously, has someone put some glue on it? Because that's what it feels like. The same thing happens when the alarm goes off in the morning, and the hardest thing is getting out of bed. Same thing happens when the alarm goes off in the morning, and the hardest thing is getting out of bed. What I want to share with you are the basic but powerful strategies.
Speaker 1:
I used to get strong and break world records, and the same strategies that I teach to my community. I remember when I started training people and they used to say to me how do you find the time to train four or five days a week with your job and your kids and your busy life? I also remember quite a few people saying I couldn't train that much. I feel guilty about spending that much time on myself. From day one, I realized the power of putting your own health and wellness first. It doesn't matter what training you're doing. It doesn't matter what form of wellness you choose. Whether you want to be the best partner, the best friend, the best employee, the best boss, you get to spend time investing in yourself. You cannot replace your health with anything. No amount of money or success will allow you to live longer and live your best life. So treat your health like your job. Your training, your nutrition, rest and recovery and sleep these are the pillars to your health. Without putting these first, everything else in your life will be substandard.
Speaker 1:
I treated my training like a task, something which was non-negotiable. I cannot remember a time over the last 12 years where I asked myself should I train today. When you take the pressure out of those choices, put it in your diary, it becomes automatic and consistent. Seriously, every time you ask yourself the question, should I train today? Should I choose that donut? I want you to immediately ask yourself am I important to me? If I can't show love to myself, then who else will? My answer to the people who ask me how do you train so consistently is because I value my quality of life and I want to feel the best I can feel every day.
Speaker 1:
So the tool that I've already mentioned is writing it down. Rather than write down all of your work appointments every day, your to-dos, and then plan your training around that, you should put your training in first and plan everything around your training. If you can only train in the afternoons, make it straight after work. If you can train in the mornings and that is where your energy is train in the mornings, make it your priority. When people say do you want to go out tonight, you say no, sorry, I've got an early training session in the morning. You know I used to get a lot of flack about that. I used to say to people I'm training in the morning and they'd say, oh, you're a nanny or you're soft, or come on, just one night won't hurt. You know what? That's okay because people look at your choices and it highlights to them that perhaps they could be making those choices too. So my summary of my first tip is to treat your training like any other important task. Make it a given, put it in your diary, and no negotiation with anyone or yourself.
Speaker 1:
So, moving on to my second strategy to keep that bar moving, just like keeping that heavy deadlift coming up, I'd like to draw on, strangely enough, my experience from teaching little children gymnastics. When my daughter Kieran was two months old, I started coaching at a club called Delta Gymnastics. The director said to me how do you feel about coaching two to five-year-olds? I was 18 and, oh my goodness, no way in the world I wasn't going to coach those snotty-nosed little things that were still in nappies and, even worse, they had their parents with them, so their parents were watching every move I made. Well, you know what? It turns out? That that year of teaching kindy gym gave me the skills I would use for the rest of my coaching career.
Speaker 1:
I learned very quickly how to break down a skill and make it achievable even for a two-year-old, a forward roll became a rock and roll, turning yourself into a little ball over and over until you could put it all together. Ball over and over until you could put it all together. And the challenge of getting those two-year-olds 30-second attention span was something else. No longer could I get them just to sit down and explain a skill no way. Now it was action stations, singing, clapping, telling stories using music and colorful equipment, and in this my creativity was born, my ability to take a complex skill and break it down and put it together again.
Speaker 1:
The biggest lesson I learned by far, however, was the concept of having fun and being in the moment, and this is my second strategy to help you get stronger, fitter, healthier and happier. Choose the movements and activities that you naturally like doing. Do the things that make you smile inside. You don't have to grind all the time with repetitive programs or classes where you're not having any fun. I had discovered the way to stick with your training routine. Make it fun, be creative, use fun music, train in different places with different people and use different equipment. Be like those two to five-year-olds who don't think of it as training. They think of it as fun, challenging, and they can have a laugh. So you're thinking how in the world do I make squatting three times a week fun or running a marathon? Granted, not every single time it's going to be fun. But how about involving other people in your journey? Change up your environment, listen to some different music, wear colorful clothes, funny socks. You'd be amazed how much more enjoyable it is to turn up for yourself. You'd be amazed how much more enjoyable it is to turn up for yourself.
Speaker 1:
Now, if you're following a strength program where you have a linear program following the percentages, adding a little bit more each week, how about throwing in a random 5RM day? Or changing your squat position from a pin squat or to a Zurcher squat? How about every minute on the minute just to do a bit of strength endurance? How about changing the color plates? That's always a fun one. How many different colors can you get on that bar, much to my coach Damien's disgust, because he never knew how much I was lifting. How much tonnage can you lift with a friend in a certain amount of time? How about trying country music just for fun? Or frequency music to really focus in on the flow of movement my personal favorite, if you regularly run or walk as your choice of exercise. How about changing up where you go? Try some hills, drive somewhere different, go to a different neighborhood, run on the beach, enjoy the moment, ask your friends to join you, take your dog or take your kids.
Speaker 1:
In my training I regularly change my sets, reps, movement, music, and some days I even walk into the gym and just do whatever I feel like. And some days I even walk into the gym and just do whatever I feel like. I do what I love doing. I often go outside to do farmer's carries in the bush, throw a kettlebell over a tree. Even Variety really is the spice of life.
Speaker 1:
I remember one year I went camping for two weeks before a really big competition. Instead of trying to get to the gyms, which would have been nearly impossible, or pulling out of the competition, I had plenty at my disposal to train. I squatted with my friends on my shoulders, I carried big rocks up and down, I used bands under my shoulders to make a makeshift bench and I looped the bands around a shovel handle to do deadlifts. And I looped the bands around a shovel handle to do deadlifts. On another camping trip I remember I took a barbell and plates with me all around outback Queensland and Northern Territory. I lifted in the dirt with no shoes, outside my tent, and that night I remember being in the shower block and hearing some ladies saying did you see that crazy lady lifting that barbell out in the dirt?
Speaker 1:
Creativity, fun and variety are the keys to keeping that momentum up day after day. If you can't think of anything that is fun to you, think back to when you were a kid. What games did you like playing? What did you love doing when you were outside? I'll let you in on a secret my favorite game was hide and seek. I still play hide and seek regularly now with my healer dogs and just two days ago Ruby, my 22 year old lifter, used hide and seek with our dogs for our warmup.
Speaker 1:
So now that I've shared those two first tips one of non-negotiation and the other one of making your training fun my third tip is find a training partner. Find a group of people, or even just one person, who can share your journey with you. I used to think I had to train on my own because I was the coach and there was no way I could train with the people I was coaching. I remember the days of slogging in that gym all on my own. The enjoyment certainly wasn't there. I had no one to share my wins with. One day, I changed my perspective and I started training with some of the people I coached and I learnt the power of community in helping you stick to your training, turn up and reach your goals. And I realised that the people I was coaching were inspired by my efforts. They saw me fail at times, they saw me continue and I learnt off them too. How nice is it when you miss a session and your training partner messages you and says I missed you today. Are you okay? Not only is it important to have a person or a group of people you can connect with. If your goal is to improve your performance, then training with people who are more advanced, or AKA better than you is the fastest way. I know how to speed up your progress.
Speaker 1:
I used to seek out the heaviest lifters in a gym and go and train with them whenever I could, and this is the reason I actually went from Olympic weightlifting to powerlifting, because in Olympic weightlifting, I used to follow myself, which means I was the heaviest lifter. Olympic weightlifting, I used to follow myself, which means I was the heaviest lifter and I had no one to chase. So in 2018, I went to powerlifting, where there were heaps of women stronger than me, and I got to know those women. I messaged them, I met them at competitions. I asked them what were your struggles, what did you do along the way that helped you? Ask them what were your struggles, what did you do along the way that helped you, and you'd be surprised how much people love sharing their experiences with you. Those people will lift you up. When I started powerlifting, I chose a certain lifter and I said to myself I'm going to keep going until I can lift those weights or more. And that's exactly what I did. It may have taken two years, but I achieved that goal.
Speaker 1:
Now, if you can't find training partners or somewhere where there's not many other gyms, you know you can find these people online. My husband calls me a stalker, I call myself a networker, and it just so happens that I have one of those communities myself, and it just so happens that I have one of those communities myself. So, to recap, get that heavy barbell moving, get rid of that glue. Lift yourself up by putting yourself first, no negotiation. Be like a kid and have fun. Be present in the moment. Laugh and play. Surround yourself with better people so they can lift you up, so that they can share your journey to get that strong body and strong mind, bit and bit, bit by bit, each and every day. Think of laying those foundations one brick at a time. Let me know how you go with these three strategies. Comment on a fun way that you've changed up your training this week. I'd love to hear from you. And until next time, lift yourself up, lift others up and stay strong. Bye.
