The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast
If you've tried all the fad diets and are sick and tired of not achieving your health and fitness goals long-term, you've come to the right place! Welcome to the Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast with me, Kristy Castillo. I'm here to help you break the annoying diet cycle, gain confidence, and reach your health and fitness goals.
This podcast will show you how to be proud of the body you have, build the body you want, and enjoy the process along the way. I'll cover topics like how to get the most from your workouts, the importance of feeding your body what it needs, and key mindset shifts that will empower you. I've broken through the BS surrounding diet culture and built my dream body, all while being a busy wife, Mom and business owner, and I know you can too!
Connect with me on Instagram at @kristycastillofit
Learn more about working together by visiting my website: https://www.kristycastillo.com/
The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast
121. Why Your Specific Fitness Training Matters
Today’s episode is covering kind of an ‘unsexy’ topic, but it’s something that is crucial for anyone on a fitness journey. When it comes to the workouts that you’re doing, your specific fitness training MATTERS. I have ladies come to me all of the time, sharing that they feel like they’re working out and doing everything they ‘should’ be doing, but they don’t see (or feel) the results they’re desiring from their workouts. While you can do workouts that you love (i.e. fitness classes, running, etc.), you can’t *only* do workouts that you love. Yes, moving your body regularly is a wonderful thing and you should be doing that! But..you WILL need to incorporate weight training if building muscle and changing the way your body looks is a goal.
This will feel uncomfortable along the way - I’ve been there too, but nothing worth having is going to feel super easy when you’re starting out! I can’t stress how important it is to be training with purpose (like utilizing progressive overload). When you’re both specific and consistent with your workouts, not only will you change the way your body looks, you’ll also achieve strength, longevity, and overall improved health.
So yes..the way you train f*cking matters! If you’re frustrated with what you’re doing and you’re not getting the results you crave, it’s time to get support from an expert. I would love to help you figure out a better way to reach your long-term fitness goals, and ultimately, build a body you love!!
In today’s episode, we cover:
- Understanding that you can do workouts you love, but not JUST workouts you love + why training to build muscle is not the same as simply ‘working out’
- Why you should have some kind of physique goal(s) as you age and are actively working to add muscle to your body
- How training to build muscle and lose fat (aka body recomposition) will be different than training simply to lose weight
- Focusing on progressive overload with your workouts + how this will look with your reps and rest
- Why you need to be both specific and consistent with your training, regardless of the workout plan you choose to follow
- Choosing movement that you love and will also support you in building strength and long-term health
How to work with me:
FIT CLUB is a monthly membership with workouts designed to take the guesswork out of your fitness routine and get you the body you want. These workouts can be done at home or at the gym.
PRIVATE COACHING is my 1:1 program, where we work closely together to cut the BS, and learn what to do to get the results you want-for life! This is the best way to fast track your results and truly understand the journey, and you can choose a 3 month or 6 month option!
MASTER YOUR MACROS COURSE is available now! Go at your own pace and learn how to make macros fit into your lifestyle.
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Welcome to the Un-Fuck-Your-Fitness Podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love.
Speaker 2:I am really excited about today's topic, but I first of all want to tell you that I'm recording this episode on Monday, the Monday, like a whole week before this episode will come out, which is crazy.
Speaker 2:I would love to say that I'm just prepared and thought of this ahead of time and really you know meeting my deadlines for myself, but in all actuality, this is the only day this week that I'm going to be home. We have the craziest week. My daughter has a college orientation tomorrow, three hours away, and then my son has baseball Wednesday through Sunday this week, also three hours away. So I'm just literally not going to be home. I'll be doing check-ins and stuff with clients, but I won't be home to do this. So I was like, oh shit, this is the only day that I have to do this. So, luckily, I have been wanting to record an episode on this topic for a long time, and so I'm really excited about it. I already I had the idea and I'm motivated to talk about it Because, if you know, you know I just can't like talk about something that I'm not passionate about or that I don't like resonate with. Weird, I know, but I'm excited. So let's dive in. I'm going to be talking about your training and how it matters and why it matters, because I've been having this conversation. Well, I have this conversation a lot and have had it a lot with clients that first come to me. It's either like I'm eating really healthy I don't know why I'm not seeing results Well, because eating healthy isn't the same as eating the right amount of what your body needs or like I'm really you know, I'm not new to working out. I work out all the time. I go to the gym, I go to these classes. I, you know, love HIIT, I love to work out from home. I weights, you know whatever. Like they're doing some sort of movement workouts, classes, something, but I don't look like it. I hear that a lot. Like I like to work out and I go to the gym, I just don't look like I work out. So a lot of clients when they come to me, they're like the goal for my body, like working with you, christy, is to actually look like I work out, like I put in so much time doing the work, and I don't look like I do the work. And so that's why I want to talk about this is because your training does matter.
Speaker 2:You can't just do workouts that you love. You can do workouts that you love, but you can't just do workouts that you love. And I hear this sometimes from influences that are trying to make fitness sound super easy and super flexible and they just want your likes and they want your money and they're going to tell you you can do any kind of workout that you want, as long as you drink this, whatever it is that they're trying to sell, or you can do whatever workout you want, you just have to enjoy it. You know, like you don't have to weight train, you don't have to do cardio or whatever that they're against or however that person's trying to spin it. They're just saying, like you can just do workouts you love, just move your body. Move your body, that's all that matters. And, yes, moving your body is okay and you should do things that you enjoy. You should do workouts that you love, but you will have to do some things that you don't love in order to get the body that you want. So I want to make it really clear here you will have to get uncomfortable and sometimes the body that you want if you have certain goals for yourself physically, to look differently, to build muscle, lose fat, whatever your training matters and this is aside from macros and calories, of course that matters as well but I'm talking about training, okay.
Speaker 2:Ok, so training to build muscle is not the same as just working out. It's not just going to the gym five days a week and getting on the treadmill and walking for five minutes or doing an incline and then maybe doing some bench presses and seeing what machines are open, right, and I hope that you get some results in the beginning. Sure, if you start going to the gym and you've never lifted before, you will see, obviously, results. You will see some progress, but eventually it won't be too long before you're going to have to train with purpose. You will hit a plateau. Your body will get used to what you're doing and it'll just adjust. But I hear a lot of trainers say any movement is good movement. Just go to the gym and do what feels good and do movement that you enjoy and like. I understand what they're saying, but it probably won't get you the body you want.
Speaker 2:If someone loves to run but wants to build muscle this was me back in the day I'm going to. Yeah, absolutely, you can still run. You should still run if you enjoy it, but you also have to do some workouts to build muscle. You can't just run and hope that the muscle builds itself. That's what I was doing. I was a runner, I love to run. I'm like why is my body? I want to look like this, I want to look toned, but all I'm doing is not eating enough, not having any idea what to do with my calories and running. My actions weren't aligned with my goal. So I understand what they're saying, like I said, but it's not true. That's not true. Any movement is good movement, yeah.
Speaker 2:If you don't have a goal and your goal is to just move absolutely. But if you have specific physique goals which you should you will need to focus on building muscle and increased mobility. I say you should have specific physique goals because, as we age, muscle is really really important. It's really really important that you have muscle on your body. It's really really important that you are mobile. It's really important that you're a little flexible, for health, for longevity. So you should have a physique goal. Even if it's not to look amazing or to grow your glutes or to see my abs, you should have a goal, otherwise you're just going to be winging it, doing workouts you love and not seeing any progress. This is why a lot of people are going to these classes Orange Theory, f45, and they're great and there's nothing wrong with the workouts themselves. But if you have specific goals to look ripped, to look toned, to grow your glutes, to grow your shoulders X, y, z You're going to have to train very, very much on purpose and it might not be something that you want to do every day.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you in the last 15 years that I've been doing this more times than not. I'm unmotivated to do the shit, okay. So if you like to run, sure, motivated to do the shit, okay. So if you, if you like to run, sure, go to the gym, get your muscle building workout in first. Pump your weights, do that, and then hop on the treadmill and do a little running. Or go outside and do a run, do it after. Because if you run first or do any kind of cardio first and then you try to lift your weights, you're going to be fatigued and so it's not going to first, and then you try to lift your weights, you're going to be fatigued and so it's not going to have the results that you want. So I suggest doing your muscle building and your weighted training first and then doing your cardio activity. But you can absolutely do it. Just know that the results will come slower.
Speaker 2:If my goal personally right now or even if I didn't have as much muscle as I have right now but I don't have like a lot of fat to lose If I were doing a lot of cardio and I was lifting weights, my body wouldn't be very clear on the goal. I personally wouldn't need to do cardio to build muscle. I don't. No one needs to do cardio to build muscle, but me specifically. At the stage size that I am, I only need to build muscle. Any cardio would be working against that at this point and it's going to make me more hungry, so I would need to eat more if I'm going to do the cardio along with building the muscle, because it's sending very mixed signals to my body.
Speaker 2:If you want to run a marathon, you're obviously going to train differently than you would. If you wanted to build glutes and abs, okay. If you want to just move your body, go for it, then go for it. But also don't complain that you're not growing any glutes or that your shoulders aren't looking toned or that you still don't have any biceps, no kidding, you're not working them out right. How you would show up to train to build muscle and lose fat body recomposition is different than how you would train to just lose weight. There's a very specific difference. If someone comes to me and is like I do not want to build any more muscle, I'm good where I'm at, I just want to lose fat, we put them in a calorie deficit and have them increase movement and they're going to stick with their weights, of course, but they would be increasing movement. But you don't necessarily need to increase your movement in a cardiovascular way if your goal is just to build muscle. So your goal is very, very important because it sets up your training, which is very, very important. You cannot just go to the gym and wing it. You cannot just show up on occasion and wing it. You can't. You can't Not if you are expecting a certain outcome To build muscle and to change your body, which is body recomposition to change the actual composition of your body, which is body recomposition to change the actual composition of your body, aka build muscle in certain areas, lose fat in certain areas, reps and rest matter.
Speaker 2:That's why, if you want to change your body composition. You can do it, I guess, through those classes that you're going to that I mentioned, and there's a million others out there. It will be very, very slow and it will probably not be in the way that you won't look the way that you want to look doing those classes, because it's going to be very slow and it's not focused on one goal of that muscle building and the fat loss, it's just it's focused on kind of both. Okay, so reps and rest matter when you are building muscle. The reps should be intense and the rest should be long enough that you can lift the next set with as much intensity as the first set. This is important if you are trying to build muscle and, yes, the fat loss will come with building muscle as well, and it will also come through macros, which which we're not talking about here. Again, this is just talking about training. Okay, so just the building muscle part, aside from the fat loss, aside from the other things that come with the macros in your workouts to build muscle and to change your body. You want to be focusing on reps. Now let's talk about that a little bit more in depth.
Speaker 2:I have clients who work out from home and they don't have a lot of weight varieties. So progressive overload means that you are continuing to challenge your body, week after week after week, workout after workout after workout, right? If you don't have access to heavier weights, if you're at home and you're like these are kind of light for me, but I don't have any more to go up to, you can increase your reps. Anything to make it harder is going to be good. You want to progressively overload your muscles. You can overload them by picking up heavier dumbbells and using those, picking up the bar, picking up the machine, right, increasing the weight. Or you can increase the load on your muscles and make them work harder by increasing the reps. So either one is fine. You can also increase the load and basically this is time under tension. So you want to keep your muscle working for as long as possible and as hard as possible.
Speaker 2:So time under tension would be adding a pulse. So you're doing a bicep curl, you bring the dumbbell all the way up. Maybe you do a half rep as well, where you bring it halfway down and then you bring it back up, and then halfway down and you bring it back up. Okay, those are pulses. So you add a couple of those, or like half reps, whatever you want to call them, you can add those. That increases the time that your muscle is under tension. It's being worked harder than if you were to just do 10 regular reps. But if you add a regular rep and then a half rep, and then a regular rep and then a half rep, you're essentially doubling your reps. You're doubling that time under tension the muscle is tearing more. It's going to regrow bigger with rest, which is where rest is important and that's how muscle is built.
Speaker 2:If you are hustling and rushing through your workout, that's not good. So you want to be thinking about the reps. You want to be adding more reps if you can't increase the weight, or even if you can, sometimes you know if you get to the end of your reps. If it says like eight reps, for example, and you're doing your bicep curls and you're like I could do like 20 more of these, you need to increase your weight or you need to increase the half reps or something right. You have to keep going because if you're not tired at the end of those reps, your muscles aren't working, they're not tearing, they're not going to rebuild, nothing is happening. So you have to be pushing yourself Along with that after that movement, when you were like holy cow, I could hardly lift that barbell up.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're doing a hip thrust and you could hardly get it to the top.
Speaker 2:Your muscles are so fatigued. You have to set it down. You have to walk away for two minutes and recover. Get a drink of water. Don't do cardio, don't do jumping jacks, don't do shit. Stand there hands on your knees, breathe, whatever. Rest, okay, then you're going to get back into position for your next set of hip thrusts or whatever you're doing and you're going to do that again. You want to be fully rested so that you can do the next set with as much intensity as the first.
Speaker 2:If you're going down in intensity and you're so tired and you can hardly rep out those movements, they're not doing anything for your body. So be very intentional, be very intense, focus on reps and rest if you want body recomp which I know so many of you do, because a lot, if not all, of my clients come to me and they're like yeah, I do want to lose some fat, yeah, I do want to tone up. So yeah, essentially I want my body to look different. I don't really care about the number on the scale right now. I really want to learn how to build muscle. You know what that means and that is body recomp Without rest in a workout.
Speaker 2:It basically becomes a circuit and then you're not doing progressive overload, you're just kind of getting through it. Those have their place absolutely like on a deload week or, you know, like a rest up week, where you're not, where you're giving your muscles a break. You only want a progressive overload for four weeks and then you want to deload back and give your muscles a break to rest and recover. Rest and recovery is so important. If you are, you know, just getting into working out, if you're just getting into the gym and you're just maybe getting on my app, if you're just getting into another program, whatever it is like, I want you to be following something. I don't want you to just get on YouTube and get random workouts. You can get on YouTube and find a plan if someone has, you know, one on there to follow from kind of like start to finish, or a monthly plan or something.
Speaker 2:I want it to be very specific, but it doesn't have to be progressive overload In the beginning. I want you to be comfortable getting consistent. I want you to be comfortable messing up. I want you to be comfortable watching videos of someone else doing the movement and really focusing on okay, mind-muscle connection right when in this movement and this bicep curls. I keep using that as an example. It's a symbolist workout but a lot of people can mess it up.
Speaker 2:So, on a bicep curl, where am I supposed to be feeling it? You don't just want to be flailing your arms back and forth, you want to tuck your elbows and keep them in one place. You want to fully extend but not overextend. You want to bring the dumbbell up to just to where you feel it. You don't want to go too far in because then you take off the contraction of the muscle. So really think about that movement when you're doing it. Am I feeling this in the right place? Am I feeling a bicep curl in my elbow? That's probably not a great idea. Am I feeling it too much in my shoulder? That means my shoulder is recruited. That might mean I'm stressed. That might mean I need to maybe turn my elbow out a little bit to recruit my bicep muscle more right, slow and controlled like.
Speaker 2:Figure out how to do the movement, how to make it work, be comfortable messing up. You're going to mess up the reps, you're going to mess up the sets, you're going to mess up the workout, it's fine. But then, as you go along, just know that you have to be super, super intentional with what you are doing and and your training does matter Like it does. I know you're going to hear things like just do workouts you love and just start and just you know, get out there. And that's great. I do want you to do that. But honestly, if you just start and you just show up to the gym and you don't have a plan, you're going to feel like everyone's looking at you, like you don't know what you're doing. So I actually think it's great to have a plan right out the gate. That way, you show up and you're like okay, I looked at this before I came into the gym. I feel like I'm good to go, like I know exactly what to do. I put it in my notes section on my phone or whatever. Right, you look like you know what's going on and, honestly, that helps you to feel more confident.
Speaker 2:When you show up somewhere without a plan, you're like what in God's name am I doing right now? Not to mention, you won't see the results fast enough. So you're in the gym or you're wherever right With friends, whatever let's pretend in the gym and you're just winging it. You don't know what you're doing. You look like you don't know what you're doing so you're kind of judging yourself like should I even be here? Everybody else looks like they know what they're doing and I don't. I'm never coming back here again. This is freaking, mortifying, even though no one probably cares. But not only that. Like, if you did show up for a while and you're trying to get your bearings right, if you don't see results, then you're not going to keep going. You have to have a plan and you have to be doing something that's working. If you're like, oh my God, I'm showing up and I'm doing the right amount of reps and I'm doing the right amount of rest and I'm feeling really good and this is really working, then of course you're going to keep doing that right.
Speaker 2:So movement is very important. You can do workouts you love, but you can't just do workouts you love and expect to see the body that you want. I'm a prime example of this. I wanted this certain body, basically the body I have now. I wanted this body.
Speaker 2:For so long I was stick skinny. I know I'm small now, but I was stick, skinny like stick figure, no muscle tone on my body. And what was I doing? Skinny like stick figure, no muscle tone on my body. And what was I doing? Freaking beach body workouts with like 15 reps and no rest and go, go, go and push yourself and you can sleep when you're dead Just all this shit. That was like not allowing me to really look the way that I wanted to.
Speaker 2:It wasn't until I did actually Body Beast from Beach Body that I was like, oh my God, I actually feel like for the first time, I feel like I know what I'm doing because it was simple, it was progressive overload, it was literally chest press, bicep curl, deadlift. It was so simple and I was like this is not easy, but the movements were simple. I wasn't out of breath, I didn't feel like I was dying and so far behind everyone and I was starting to see my muscles grow. So that for me was like, oh my God, this is traditional weightlifting, I love this. And then I moved on away from Beachbody, obviously, and found out that there was so many better other ways to do it, and that's obviously what I do now. That's what my clients do now in Fit Club. That's what my one-on-one clients do now. So now I just help everyone with, no matter where you're at teaching you like.
Speaker 2:Okay, if you're doing all of these classes every single week and you don't look the way that you want to look, this is why this is what you need to be doing. You can still do a couple of those classes. Absolutely. Go for a run every Saturday at 6 am with your buddies. You crazy psychopath Like I don't want to do that. But if you do, then do it.
Speaker 2:But you also need to be fueling your body and you also need to be lifting weights. You also need to be doing the things that are going to get you to your goals physically. Running might not get you to your goal physically, but it might be really good for you mentally and emotionally and cardiovascularly, right. So you should do it, even if you love it. You should do it for sure, especially if you love it. You should do it for sure. But you should also do things because it's good for you, because you do need muscle mass on your body, because you do need to protect your insides, right, and you do need to build your body. You do need to be healthy. We were meant to be outside and moving and picking up things and walking, and our bodies were meant to be strong, and so that's why you should be doing the things that will help you to be strong and to help you get to your goals.
Speaker 2:So I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The way you train does fucking matter. The workouts you do, they do matter. And if you wanna get out of this cycle of I'm working out, I'm eating right, I'm doing the things, I'm going for walks I get these messages all the time and I love to help. Like I've said before, I love to help, but I don't know exactly how to if I don't work with you, because there's a lot that goes into it. But if you feel like I'm doing all the things and I don't look like I do all the things, then it's time to hire someone. It's time to really narrow it down and I will tell you I'll be honest with you it doesn't take long to figure it out.
Speaker 2:I remember doing that Body Beast program and lifting. You can do any program you can go to. Well, I heard bodybuildingcom was like out of business now, which is crazy. I need to check into that. Someone told me that. If you're listening to whoever told me that, thank you, unless I've mistakenly heard that. Anyway, you can Google things right.
Speaker 2:There's free programs out there. It's not that hard to find a program. You literally need five days of workouts, or four, and you do those for four to six weeks in a row. It's not hard, but you can do those things. And when you start to do those programs and you're like, wow, this is simple and I can see my muscles growing and I'm not so fatigued and I'm not so ravagely hungry and I'm not, you start to see these little wins and you start to understand how your body works.
Speaker 2:It doesn't take long when my clients work with me and I teach them and they start to understand. Oh, that's literally why Christy just told me, why my body's not responding well and not eating enough or I'm not doing the right workouts. You know, whatever it is, once we start on that program, three to six months later, like, you're pretty much good, you understand and I love to kind of educate, and this podcast will give you so much information as well. So keep plugging in and learning and keep showing up, but also working smarter, not harder, is a thing that is real in the fitness industry. But your training does matter. Your training absolutely matters, and anyone who tells you otherwise, block, unfollow, get rid of because they be lying to you. Okay, all right, thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:I will talk with you next week. Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time. Bye.