The Tea with Tina
The Tea with Tina is going to be your new favorite weekly chit-chat that will feel like a good, juicy sit-down with your BFF. This podcast isn't your average (and boring) radio talk show-styled podcast. We dig deep, get personal, and have lots of fun along the way. Hear some relatable stories and a different perspective on various topics from health and fitness to pop culture. I am Tina Wieland, a certified fitness trainer and nutrition coach. Grab your caffeinated drink of choice, get comfortable, and be ready to hear the TEA.
The Tea with Tina
254 | Better Is Better: Redefining Progress Beyond Heavy Weights
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What if everything you thought about strength training was keeping you from making real progress? If you're struggling with autoimmune issues, chronic fatigue, or simply feeling overwhelmed by fitness culture's "go hard or go home" mentality, this episode will be your permission slip to train differently.
After my Hashimoto's diagnosis, I watched my deadlift numbers plummet from 200+ pounds, and initially felt like a failure. That journey led me to develop what I call "Smart Strength" – a training philosophy that prioritizes quality over quantity, sustainability over intensity, and personalization over cookie-cutter approaches.
Think of people like plants – some are cacti that thrive with minimal care, while others need daily misting and careful tending. Your fitness approach should honor your unique needs rather than forcing yourself into a training style that depletes you. Women's bodies, in particular, have different recovery requirements and hormonal considerations that many traditional programs ignore.
Progressive overload doesn't always mean adding weight. Changing tempo, stance, rest periods, or set schemes can create significant training stimulus without necessarily lifting heavier. This means you can continue building strength even during periods of limited energy or when managing chronic conditions.
Ready to escape the burnout cycle? Join me in exploring how to create a sustainable fitness approach that respects your body's limits while still challenging you to grow stronger. Follow me @TinaWeilandFit to continue the conversation about redefining what strong looks like for your unique body.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Tea with Tina podcast. Today's episode is about how to train smarter and not harder, and I kind of like had this term and who knows, somebody could have coined this term already, but I had this term in my head called smart strength, and if you've been here for a while, you know that I, within the past like three years, got diagnosed with Hashimoto's. It's an autoimmune. I've struggled with hormonal imbalances, periods of low energy, constant drain and post-COVID, post-hashimoto's diagnosis. I've never been able to get back to my regular intensity of strength training, like I was deadlifting 200 plus pounds and it felt good, right, you know, you're the normal tired, the normal muscle soreness. But now it seems like, no matter how much I try to progress and recover and eat and manage stress and all those fun things, I just can't, and that's fine, I've definitely come to terms with that. I just can't, and that's fine, I've definitely come to terms with that. But I'm trying to find a way to train in a way that fits me, where I'm not just, you know, doing a little amount. I'm training smart, right, something that's going to challenge me and progress me but also minimize intensity, so I'm not like drained that day and and feeling beat up and worn out, right, and I think there's a lot of the reason I recorded out right and I think there's a lot of the reason I recorded this is because I think there's a lot of people out there like me.
Speaker 1:I think, uh, whether you have an autoimmune or a chronic illness or maybe you're going through a stressful time in your life, there's people that have different thresholds. I was actually just thinking about this in terms of plants, since I'm a plant lady. I want you to think of people like plants. Right, we have snake plants or cacti. They can go like a month without water and they love all this sunlight. Meanwhile, there's plants that need to be misted every single day and have constant moisture. There's some that like to be in the dark. You know, there's different types of plants that need different things, and I want you to visualize yourself like that.
Speaker 1:I think there's some people that thrive off of like doing crazy shit. They just love chasing that high. They're adrenaline junkies. They're doing craft, but they're doing marathons. They're doing all these things. Some of some people are like real chill and they just want to like do some yoga, walk on the beach. And then there's people that are everything in between, but I don't think anything's necessarily right or wrong, and that's the part that bothers me, because I feel like there's a lot of fitness that whatever section you're in, they'll kind of knock the other section and be like you know what? This is the only way. If you don't do this, this is wrong.
Speaker 1:And I kind of got that in my head in regards to, like, bodybuilding and strength training, because I always felt that strength training was a middle ground, uh, to cardio and yoga, which we'll just kind of like have a spectrum there. And you know, for me strength training, I always thought like okay, once you can generally do around this weight, you'll stay there right. Like I mean, things may change if you get an injury and you know, if you hit a PR, you know if you hit 200 pounds, that doesn't mean you're gonna be able to do 200 pounds forever, and like you can't go below that. But it just really messed with me when I had to really cut back the strength that I was lifting. But you know what, looking back at it, strength is still a middle ground because strength training is relative. You can be challenged by three pound dumbbells. Go take Pilates. I bet you'll be using one pound dumbbells. You can be challenged with body weight. Look at calisthenics. These people are shredded doing just body weight. Sometimes 10 pounds is hard. Sometimes 100 pounds might be hard for somebody, 200, 300, it's all relative. So I'm using that and I can still do strength training and make it be beneficial. The weights are just going to look different and just because I'm not doing a ton of weight doesn't mean that it's not valid, right? And that's where the training smarter, not harder comes in. So let me get into why that. Go hard or go home mentality is a lot Okay.
Speaker 1:So here's the myth you have to push through exhaustion and soreness to see results. This is particularly true to my autoimmune and chronic illness friends or people who are living very stressful lives. Maybe they struggle with neurodivergence, okay, and they're just on the edge of stress and they're burned out and they're. It can apply to anybody. You do not have to push through exhaustion and soreness because this leads to burnout, injuries and plateaus.
Speaker 1:People think that if they're not 110%, all the time killing themselves, walking out ready to throw up because they did 100 burpees, that it wasn't worth working out. Your body can only sustain that for so long, like if you were thinking of your body like a car. If you floored your car everywhere, redlined it everywhere, slammed on the brakes, think about how easily your car would get beat up. It probably wouldn't last very long. There's a some, there's some that can maybe take it right by chance, but most of them they're not. But if you're easy with it and you maintain it and maybe sometimes you have to redline it, but not all the time it's going to last a lot longer.
Speaker 1:And you know, overtraining like that it puts stress on the body. Working out is a stressor, while a lot of the times it's used for positive stress. Like I said, if your body's already stressed out and you're adding more stress onto it, it doesn't go. Oh, you're working out, good stress, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna worry about that. Your body just is like oh my god, why is my heart rate going up? I'm getting stress put on myself, I can't take this right. So it does. It doesn't view things as good and bad and in turn that causes you to be inflamed, causes you to be more tired. Your hormones get off balance. You, you know you're trying to lose weight and and maybe put on some muscle, it's, it's gonna be a lot harder.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing is that women's bodies something I've observed as well um, with our hormones and our recovery needs there's definitely studies out there that say that women need to sleep longer than men. Um, and again, like our main, our body's main focus they're thinking in the caveman brain terms is to have a baby. Okay, whether you personally want to have a child or not, your body is like we are humans. We need to mate and create more of our kind so we can continue to live. That is that's literally your body's main like internal goal, and it's going to do everything to protect that. Hence why we have more fat than men. We need more recovery than men. We have periods, right, so we're not built for that same intensity that men can handle, and even just their body frames, and they have more testosterone, so they're going to build more muscle, naturally. So there's a lot of things that make how we train different, not that it's any less.
Speaker 1:Again, going back to Pilates, a lot of people shit on Pilates and they're like, oh, pilates, it's not a good workout, and I'm not going to lie. I used to think that too. I thought it was just a trend until I started taking Pilates and doing Pilates and studying Pilates. I'm actually studying for my certification now and it's been a game changer for me. It's been a lifesaver. It's been amazing to have a nice muscle burn where I feel like I'm working but I'm not whipped after. And there's plenty of videos of these big buff guys trying to do Pilates workouts and they can't keep up. So it's kind of funny to see the dynamic.
Speaker 1:Right, and this is the big realization, right, more isn't better, better is better, right, like you know, if you had one minute to do as many burpees as you could, right, let's say you did as many burpees as you could and you started to kind of slam to the ground. You started to use your lower back, you started to kind of slam to the ground, you started to use your lower back, you started to get all these impact on your joints because they were sloppy and lazy, but you got a ton of burpees in. You know your heart rate would be up, but maybe you'd have some back pain, joint pain, right, uh. But what if you slowed down those burpees? You made them slow and controlled and you made sure the form was perfect but maybe only did half what the other person did, who do you think got the better workout? The person who did less but better, because better is better. Right Now, let's think about going back to that concept of smart strength.
Speaker 1:What does that look like? So? So, strength isn't obviously about maxing out every session and I feel like it's easy to think that, right Like you, just keep progressing and keep moving up and wait. But even if we look at the term progressive overload OK, if you've ever heard of that, progressive overload is essentially getting better at your strength training, but it's not always moving up in weight. We are somehow progressing in our strength training.
Speaker 1:So if we take a squat, for instance, yes, increasing weight over time is one way to progressively overload, but let's say we stick with the 10 pounds. We never move up. What can we do? We can change our stance. Maybe we do a wide stance, uh. Maybe we do a front squat instead of a back squat right, it's going to challenge our muscles in a different way. Maybe we change tempo, we slow it down. Maybe we do a one second pause. That's going to make it a lot harder. Maybe we do a three second uh descent on our squat. Maybe we change up the reps and sets, but not the weight. Maybe we change up the rest longer rest, shorter rest. There's a lot of variables that we can change to progressively overload. That does not include increasing the weight. And again, this is kind of the art form of smart strength, right, and going into it progressive overload, not punishment, small, intentional strength gains over time.
Speaker 1:I'm not even saying that you can't progress in weight ever Like. You're not just doomed to being like at five pounds forever. You can progress. It may just look slower than you think. It's not going to be every single week, week, right, um. And then you also have to listen to your body. Some days you are going to go heavier like. Some days you're going to feel great and you can just do more and it's going to come out of nowhere. And then the next time you might be able to do, uh, two-thirds of that. Maybe you're on your period, maybe you're at crappy sleep, maybe it's just one of those days. And then we also have to prioritize recovery. More muscles honestly build outside of the gym. If you didn't know, when you're working out, you're actually ripping and tearing your muscle fibers. When we build our muscles is when we're recovering, usually when we're sleeping. That's when our muscles repair themselves and build back stronger and, depending on the fuel we give our bodies through nutrition, that can have an impact as well. And the other thing is sustainable workouts. Okay, we got to make sure they're sustainable.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be in the gym for two hours. You could do 30 to 45 minutes, even less than that. Sometimes, when I'm in the gym and I'm feeling overwhelmed, I'll be like I'm gonna pick four things or five things and just get them done, and I don't even necessarily pay attention to the clock. Usually it takes me like 20 to 30 minutes, but that's it. I used to feel like I had to do all these things and make sure I was at the gym for a certain amount of time or it wasn't worth doing. And maybe you can work up to a point to that point but you don't have to be there all the time to that point, but you don't have to be there all the time and then so kind of recapping everything. What does this mean for you? Maybe you're somebody who's like me and you know you feel like you try to do what everybody else is out there doing on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 1:You know hip thrusting like 300 pounds and you're like I just can't, I can't, I can't do this, I can't be doing 100 burpees till I throw up Like this is just too much. And this is where the smart strength comes in. Why can't you hip thrust what you can hip thrust? That girl has probably worked up to the 300 pounds over time and again. Maybe you'll never get there. Maybe you have no desire to get there. Maybe you will get there. It all depends on the person.
Speaker 1:But you know, if you train consistently right, I would say anywhere between two to five times per week, depending on your personal needs, your schedule, your goals you need structured progression. You need to go in with a plan and think, kind of going back to the squat example, like stick with the program for a while. You can always switch little things up, but you know, if you're squatting, track it and go. Okay. You know this has been easy for me. I've been actually able to move up in weight. Well, now I'm kind of stuck at 30 pounds. So you know I'm going to slow it down a little bit. You know, and this is something if you have no idea how to do, hire a coach. Hi, I'm a coach, but you could hire me and I can help you with that. I love helping people who have, like, unique injuries and setbacks, still be able to progress, because, again, that's something that I go through and something I help my clients with Don't train to failure every single time.
Speaker 1:We don't need to max out till your legs are shaking. You're ready to die Like that's just using up all of your energy and unless you're like an athlete with proper recovery and nutrition, you're going to feel like garbage really fast. The first week might feel okay and then after that you're just going to crash and burn. And also prioritize that recovery mobility, warmups, rest days, active rest days, right, managing your stress. Think long-term.
Speaker 1:Where will this training style leave me in a year? Am I able to sustain this or is it going to burn me out? Am I going to be dreading my workouts Like what's going on? And I'm not even saying like sometimes it's fun to throw in one of those crazy days. There's nothing wrong with that. But don't feel like once you hit a certain point, it's like you can't go below that again. You have to keep up with it. That's not wrong or that is wrong. I'm sorry, but yeah. So just some things to think about. Does this resonate with you? Have you ever felt like more intensity equaled better results for you? I don't know. Feel free to share with me. I'm over on Instagram at Tina Weiland Fit. You can catch me on Facebook. You can leave a comment on this podcast, whatever, but thank you for tuning in and I will catch you guys in the next one. Bye for now.
