Smarter Fitness, Longevity, and Stress Management for Women Over 40 with Joel Jamieson

In this episode of our women’s health and fitness podcast, we sit down with renowned strength and conditioning expert Joel Jamieson to dive deep into longevity, stress management, and smarter training for women over 40. Joel explains how to train smarter, not harder, using science-backed methods that improve VO₂ max, heart rate variability (HRV), and recovery for optimal health.

We discuss how hormonal changes, stress, and lifestyle demands impact fitness in midlife — and how women can balance strength training, cardio, and recovery to boost energy, metabolism, and long-term well-being. Joel also shares actionable tips to build sustainable habits, prevent burnout, and enhance overall longevity through smarter programming and recovery tracking. 

If you’re a woman in your 40s or beyond looking to improve your strength, endurance, and vitality while reducing stress and fatigue, this conversation will help you rethink your approach to training and progress. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone. My name is Haley and this is Laura
and welcome to the Body Pod.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Excited to dive into everything that you have to share
with us. For listeners who are not familiar with you
and may not know you yet, how did you get
into the world of strength and conditioning.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah, that's a good question. So, like a lot of coaches,
probably I was not quite good enough to be the
athlete I wanted to be, but I liked the training
side from day one, and so in college I played
college football for a brief period of time and then
really got into the strength findishing side at University Washington
and then from there spend them a time of the
Seahawks and open a gym back in two thousand and three.

(00:49):
So it's something I've been doing for a long time.
I've always just been passionate about helping people. I love
the science, I love the whole fieldly on training, I
like being in the gym, and it's just always been
a big part of my life and so do it.
Like I said about twenty years now.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
So did you start with these elite athletes from the
beginning of your career, like that's all you've really coached?

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah? No, I mean, so I was really fortunate to
work under a great trained coach at University of Washington,
Bill Gillespie and folks on the football side of things,
and then Seahawks obviously was still football. But when I
opened up my gym in two thousand and three, two
things happened. One, I ended up being next to a
mixed martial arts gym that happened to be one of
the biggest, most successful gyms in the world. So pretty

(01:32):
early on, I was very fortunate to work with very
high level combat athletes. But at the same point in time,
I honestly have probably trained more youth athletes and general
population people that I've ever trained pro athletes, just from
a number standpoint. So I trained a lot of volleyball athletes,
I trained a lot of soccer athletes. I trained a
lot of just parents who wanted to be healthier. I
trained a lot of Microsoft executive or Microsoft employees in

(01:54):
Seattle area. So I've trained a really wide mix of people. Honestly,
I mean pretty much anybody and everybody at this point.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
So how many I assume that that means you've trained
women over forty, which is our demographic here.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yes, I mean probably yeah, I've probably trained more women
than men the grand picture of things. A lot of
that was the youth athletes. Like I said, I did
build a big volleyball program and a lot of female
athletes were always coming to me in big diverse group.
But yeah, women over forty is certainly a market I've
worked with quite a bit. And you know, the reality
is that principles are principal trains training. Everyone's very unique,

(02:31):
but I've always tried to apply a principles based approach
to each individual person. So you know, I've done that
over a lot of different people with a lot different goals.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, I imagine, so when you look at a periodized
year for someone and we're just going to speak to
women specifically somewhere in the midlife range. But if you
were to periodize, what would that look like in a program?
Are you hitting all rep ranges? Are you doing cardio

(02:59):
with that? And what does that look like? What would
your recommendations be for the for the everyday female midlife female?

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, I mean I think, really what it comes down to,
and this is my overlying underlying I guess philosophy of
all of this is just individualized approach, meaning what is
your particular goal, what are your particular strengths and weakness
as an individual? What does your lifestyle look like? People's
lifestyles often limit or set the guidelines and what their
training program should be, and then I reverse engineer backwards

(03:28):
from all of that. So if someone you know, a
female in their mid forties comes to me and says, look,
my goal is just to be the healthiest version of myself.
I want to live as long and healthy a life
as I possibly can, the place you always start with
is what's the aerobic fitness level via two max is
a big piece of this. What's their strength background, their
strength training background at all? You know, what's their movement
capacity look like, what does their lifestyle look like? And

(03:50):
then you set goals based on where you think you
can make the most improvements and where you think the
foundational pieces you start with. So if somebody comes to
me and says, you know, I'm in great shape. I
do a lot of cardio, but I just have never
really lifted weights, that programs will look very, very different
than if somebody has the opposite side of things and says,
I love lifting weights, but I just don't really do
much cardio. I'm not you don't have time for it.

(04:11):
That's going to be a very different approach. Or if
someone says, look, i'm really busy, I've got two days
a week to train, that's a very different program than
someone says I can put thirty minutes, five days a
week into this. So it's really hard to just say
here's the generic answer to anyone's programs, because it depends
on the individual. And that's what I would say across
the spectrum. It's trying to figure out where someone's goals
are and then where their weaknesses are, and then how

(04:34):
do I fill those gaps and the most efficient way possible.
And so I don't really program for you know, a
year out, a program in blocks at a time to
try to accomplish specific things.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Okay, but you would definitely any kind of program that
you would design individual. Would you recommend all REP ranges?
Do you think that it's better to stay in one
REP range? You know? Where do you see your females
normally land?

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Sure, that's a good question. So again, let's say someone's
goal is just health longevity. We know pretty clearly from research,
and I can just tell you from working with hundreds
of people or thousands of people over the years. BO
two max Cardiovascuar fitness is a huge piece of that,
and strength training is also a huge piece that you
need both. And I would also say I think there's
been this argument lately, you know zone two only or

(05:23):
Zone two plus intensity or high intensity or only high intensity.
I personally think you need a range, and that applies
to both strength training and cardiovascuars training. It doesn't mean
you're not going to prioritize. So there are times you're
certainly going to prioritize certain rep ranges or certain intensities
on the cardiovascuar side, but across your entire life, across
the spectrum. I mean, I really want to build programs

(05:43):
are sustainable. I'm going to prioritize different things at different periods.
So I'm going to start out at one area based
on what you need and then working to progress as
we go. The key to me is just I'm always
wanting to continue to improve, and so if you're only
doing one rep range or you're only doing one single intensity,
you're going to hit a plateau. You're not going to
continually improve if you're just doing one thing. So again

(06:04):
it's come down to progression, and that means across the
board for volume man intensity changing over time.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
So if we look at and again I'm just going
to keep throwing these at you, if we look at
a week where most females at this age are, they
have a lot going on. They're either really you know,
busy with their career that they have spent twenty plus years,
thirty plus years doing, but they also have aging parents,
they have teenagers that might be giving them a run

(06:34):
for their money, so they're kind of juggling a lot
of things. Now. I'm a big fan of zone two
because I'm a cyclist and I you know that that's
kind of my sport. But I also get the conversations
every day of what's the minimum effect of dose? Because
I don't have four hours a week to just do cardio.

(06:58):
I may have four to five hours if I'm lucky,
over the seven days.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah, So I think this is an important thing to
talk about, and I know it's gotten a lot of
attention lately. I would say that in general, we just
know from years of research and how the body works.
So the lower intensity stuff builds the foundation for the
higher intensity standpoint or high intensity because it drives changes
in the body, and we talk about mitochondria a lot,

(07:24):
but also drives changes in the heart itself, the cardiovasco system.
So I would just say that lower intensity work gives
you a higher ceiling. But to your point, if I
can only spend a very small amount of time per week,
I can't spend all of it doing low intensity because
I won't get enough time at the higher intensity. So
it comes down to exactly what you mentioned. There's a

(07:44):
huge difference between thirty minutes a week or six minutes
a week and four hours a week. If someone has
thirty minutes twice a week, you're going to do mostly
high intensity work and there's not going to be a
lot of time for the zone two. If you can
put two to three four hours in a week, then
you can spread it out to eighty you know, seventy
eighty percent of your work get lower intensities. So it
just really depends on how much time you're going to spend.
I will tell you this, most people in the scenario

(08:07):
you describe, let's say somebody who's in their forties. You know,
a female, she's got a busy job, she's doing all
different things. That's a lot of energy going towards the
stress of life. There's not that much more stress that
can be put on her from a high intensity standpoint.
So you can't go in the gym and do high
intensity every single day, which is the flip side of this.
I see a lot of people saying, well, high intensy

(08:27):
is more effective, So I'm just going to do that
all the time. Sure, if it's twice a week, then
it's manageable. But I've looked at a lot of data
and a lot of people. When you start trying to
do high intensity three four, five days a week on
top of all the things you're talking about, it's just
not a recipe for long term success. People overtrain, and
we've seen this in crossbit, We've seen this across the
board and just people go to hit classes one day
after another. So the low intensity is the balancing point

(08:50):
to that. So again, it's hard to give you a
definitive answer of exactly how much time people should spend,
but it's the more time you can spend, the more
low intensity you should do. I'd put it that way.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Okay, so do you ever combine zone two, Say like
you take an hour ride on a stationary bike and
you do thirty minutes in zone two, You've done a
warm up, you have a cool down, and then you
just do you know, ten minutes of high intensity intervals?
Is that appropriate?

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah? Sure, there's no there's no reason not to do that.
If that's again, I would just say the more time
you spend the week, the more you can compartmentalize training.
But the less time you can spend, the more you
can integrate training. The compartmentalization over the long run might
lead to slightly better results because you're spending more time
you're individualizing components. But most people, like you say, can't
do that. So if they can get thirty minutes zone too,

(09:40):
and they can do ten minutes intervals at the end,
that's great. That's a very very good way to put time.
Put things together in time and sensitive or you know,
time efficient way, same things approaches, Same thing with strength training.
If you have all the time in the world, it's
more effective generally to separate strength training from cariovascular training
because they have different effects and you can have different overlap.
But most people's lives aren't that that don't allow for that, right,

(10:05):
They're busy, so they're going to do both. They're gonna
do some Zone two, they can do some high intens
and they can do some lifting. Is it optimal? Probably not,
But it's far better to get all those things in
than not get them all in because you're trying to
space them out so far, because you're trying to separate things.
This doesn't work for most people. So you know ninety
nine per cent of the population. Just get in a
couple of sessions of intervals, get in as much Zone

(10:26):
two as you can fit in, and then get a
couple of sessions of strength training. And however you have
to combine those, it's fine. Just get them in.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
So VO two max you mentioned that that is a
key player, and we hear this from many big influencers
in the field. Sure, well, how long? Well, first of all,
we know that we I don't know, drop a percentage
or a little bit every year as we get past
forty and beyond. I don't know the exact numbers for that.

(10:54):
But is it possible to build your VO two max
after forty And if so, what would you say the
range is? Would that be six months, would that be
three months? Where would you land with that?

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Yeah? Look, the great thing about training is you can
always improve at any age, you know. I've had I
had a woman come to me a long, long time ago.
I think she was in her mid fifties at the time,
and she came to the gym. She said, I want
to set a world record in deadlifting or power She
just said powerlifting. At the time, I was like, okay,
what's your lifting background. She's like, I've never lifted weights.

(11:32):
And I said, well, that's quite a lofty goal. You
know what made you decide to want to do this?
And she said, well, I was flying home on a
trip in an airplane and I read the magazine and
the airplane there was a story about powerlifting, and I
just think that's something I want to do. And I said, so,
you've never lifted weights and you want to set a

(11:52):
world record in powerlifting, and she said, yeah, that's what
I want to do. And so, to be honest, I
was a bit skeptical. You know, you hear people say
these kind of things that seem a little you know,
pine the sky idea. But I said, okay, I you know,
if you were serious about this, I'm going to need
you to come to the gym three days a week,
you know, she was was still working full time. She
wasn't retired. I don't think she had kids. But I said, look,

(12:13):
i'm gonna need you to commit to three days a
week and we're going to focus on getting to whatever
level we can. And you know, this is going to
be a multi year process, and I really want to
set the expectations for her, right. I want to say
six months from now, you're going to be saying world records,
which is not possible. But I said, look, this is
going to take us time, and if you're committed to this,
I'm going to commit to you. And so she said,
I will do it. So she came in for three

(12:35):
times a week, and like I said, she was ground zero.
She had never touched a weight in entire life. Like
she'd been to the gym, dune cardio, she just had
never lifted weights. And long story shorts, she made very,
very consistent progress. We realized her her deadlift was her strength,
and she ended up sitting at Washington State World Records
two years into training for her age group and definitely

(12:57):
left the three hundred plus pounds at fifty minute. At
that point, she's like fifty seven, did it to three
hundred and seven pounds bench press one hundred and I
can't remember the details one thirty one forty I think
I want to say, you know, and she didn't set
a world record, but she said the Washington state record,
and she decided like that's what she wanted to do,
and then she kind of stopped painting, but she made
her mind up that she was going to do it,
and she went from nothing to setting two. I was

(13:18):
studying the Washington state record the deadlift, and a very
very good became a great lifter. I mean, I wish
she would have continued, honestly, but she just kind of
made her mind up that that was she was gonna
that was what she wanted to do, and once she
done it, she she moved on. But it was you know,
you can you can accomplish a whole lot throughout your
life if you're dedicated and you're committed to it like
she was. And she I don't think she missed a
single workout in the entire time I worked with her.

(13:40):
She showed up every single session on time, did what
did what I would ask her to do, did the
things outside the gym I ask do and you know,
she made an incredible, incredible progress and had a great,
great time doing it, so you can you can make
really really good progress at any age. As far as
VO two max goes, it's hard to give you numbers
because it depends on where you're starting, and there's all
there are a lot of genetics that go into that.

(14:01):
Some people are very genetically predisposed towards VO two max,
they're going to make a very quick progress. Some people
are on the other end of the spectrum. They're more
strength based and VO two is harder for them to develop.
It also depends if someone played sports maybe earlier in life,
they're probably gonna have easier time building back to it
that they never played the sport or built it earlier
in life. But you can make consistent progress and I
think for most people that's what matters most. They want

(14:22):
to be seeing progress. And the good thing about the
aerobic system is it's very adaptable. There are a lot
of parts of the system that can improve. So if
you are consistently in the gym doing the right things
from a Cardiebasters standpoint, you're going to continue to see improvements.
And that's to me what matters most. If you're making
small improvements for a long period of time, you're going
to end up in a very good place.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
So then the cardio is a lot easier to see
changes as far as you're getting fitter and you know
you're getting fitter. Whereas building muscle, you know, there's a
misconception that you know you can hammered out for six weeks,

(15:06):
eight weeks. I've had I've had women you know, do
a six week course with me and they're like, I
didn't gain an ounce of I didn't gain any muscle,
And I'm like, well, of course, of course she did it.
A you're in a chat loss phase, so your your
body's not really prime. But it's it takes such a
long time to build muscle and especially you know, to

(15:29):
really see that definition of what women are looking for.
But do you find you know, what would you say
on average again ballpark of a female new to strength training,
of what she could potentially gain in a year with
your with you as her coach, where you can control
a lot of the controllables.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
I mean, look, you can. Again, It's such a hard
thing to say because what level you know, where are
the starting ground zero? I mean across terms of muscle
masks and you can definitely get a few pounds of
muscle masks, and you know, six months or your first
year of training depends on where you're starting. But what's
more important than muscle mass is muscle quality and muscle
relative muscle strength. If we look at the longevity data,

(16:10):
it's not always the people of the most muscle, it's
the people that have good, high functioning, good quality muscle
that's strong and can can do the job it can do. So,
you know, I watched this long story I'll try to
make short, but my mom raised me from kid as
a single parent, and she was extremely hard working, kept
three of us going, and then later years she became

(16:31):
a flight attendant. Well in her early sixties, she has
a stroke and she was down in Miami and a layover.
She had a stroke. Then from that she ended up
having what's called sarcadosis, which is a lung condition that
basically just lowers your VO two it almost not zero,
but very low. She had breast cancer, she had car
Vassard's ease, and all of that made it so she
couldn't move, like her ability to move and be active

(16:52):
was just completely cut to zero, and she lost muscle mass,
not surprisingly as a result of that, so she lost
one hundred and ten pounds on the ninety pounds at
the end. And I had to watch this very slow
degradation of my mom, unfortunately, going from a very active
flight tenant travel the world to barely being able to
walk down the hallway. And it was horrible to see,

(17:14):
and it was horrible to watch, and it was horrible
to take her to doctor after doctor, and really their
only solution was like, here's a drug, here's a treatment.
You know, come back and see us. We'll test you again.
There just wasn't anything else they could do for her.
And I say this because I think that's the most
important thing to consider when we're talking about women or
anyone in their forties whose goal is to live the longest,
healthiest life possible. You want to have enough muscle and

(17:35):
strength to move around, to be very, very active your
whole life. You want to be able to do the
things that you enjoy doing. You want to be able
to have the community that you have around you. And
that's what muscle and cardiovascar or fitness are for. Right.
It's not just to move a weight on the bar,
or it's not just to hit a certain via two max.
It's to enjoy your life and do the things that
are important to you. So rather than I would say,

(17:56):
rather than being too cut up and exactly how much
muscle you're gaining, it's do you have the strength to
get up and do the things you want to do
every day? Are you building functional strength that allows you
to move? Are you building BO two max that allows
you have the energy? And those two go together, and
then say that because people with low VO two maxes
they lose muscle mass faster. Why Because it's our aerobic

(18:17):
system that's keeping our muscle basically going. Our energy has
to be going to the muscle for muscle to do
its job. And when our body loses VO two, it
loses aerobic function. Our body starts to shed muscle faster
because it's a metabolo y demanding tissue. If we don't
have the energy for it, our body will get rid
of that muscle. So you need to develop both the
VO two side and the muscle side. And again, that

(18:38):
to me comes down to muscular strength more than it
does it just muscular size for most people. And in
that sense, people can gain strength reasonably quickly and they
can gain it, you know at any age as I mentioned,
So I would just say for most women out there,
I would muscle mass important. Don't get me wrong, But
if the bar is continuing to get lighter and you're
able to do more reps, you're able to do heaper weight,

(18:59):
your movement quality is improving, your angree levels are improving.
To me, those are the really important markers rather than
someone saying, oh, if I didn't gain two pounds of muscle,
I'm just frustrating. So I'm not making progress. You're probably
making great progress. You're probably getting stronger, and great things
are happening. So I think it's really important for just
to have that frame of mind when you're training that
what you're actually trained for isn't necessarily muscle mass per se.

(19:20):
It's to train to be able to do the things
you want to do.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
That's the mic drop right there.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
You know, I was just going to say that is
the best reminder and the best advice you could give
to anyone.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
So have you worked with many women specifically on GLP
ones and have you seen the muscle loss from that
or do you feel like with good coaching they can
maintain a lot of that muscle mass along with the
weight loss.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, no, I have. I think again, somebody who's got
a lot of weight to lose, I think it's a
really powerful tool, or someone who just has not been
able to shed the weight. And we're seeing a lot
of good papers come out. It has health beneficial health
decks across the board that we're seeing. But as you mentioned,
I have seen muscle loss, and I think it's largely
just because they eat so little, because it can suppress

(20:09):
appetite to the point where they just can't eat enough.
And I've got friends and family who are in the
same boat. They've lost thirty or forty pounds, but you
can clearly see that some muscle mass has been a
part of that, which is which is a negative. So
I think you know, your goal again should be to
not lose weight as fast as you possibly can. It
should be to lose it in the healthiest way possible.
So I'm an advocate of finding the right dose if

(20:29):
you're going to use any GLP one, finding the dose
that doesn't sequest, that doesn't make your appetite so low
that you can't eat or that you don't have the
energy to train. I'd rather see someone lose weight slower,
but more of that coming from fat than muscle obviously,
and a lot of times that means dialing the dose
down a bit and feeling like you don't have to
lose thirty pounds the first month. You know, you can
spread that out to where it's actually coming from fat.

(20:51):
So I think it's an important tool, but it is
one you have to be careful with because it's very
easy to lose muscle if you're just not eating. And
I think that's really what causes the muscle maul LUs
as much as anything else. So they're just not eating,
they don't have the energy to train, So you really
just have to be aware of that. And again it
comes back to the mindset.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
Absolutely, I do think you can maintain your muscle though,
or you can maintain most of it. I think you
with with the right dose to where you're not completely
suppressing your appetite to zero, and with consistence strain training,
you can keep your muscle. I mean people even gain
some muscle on It's it's difficult, but you can definitely
do it.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah. Well, if we move on to Morpheus, I've been
dying to talk to you about Morpheus. So it's a
chess strap heart rate monitor and you have an app
that goes with it. Yep, okay, so how does that
compare to chest strap is always going to be better
than something tracking at the wrist, but I always recommend

(21:50):
like Polar H ten just because you know, it's always
been shown to work really well. But how does that
how does yours compare number one? And what are you
tracking on the app in these different ranges? Can you
talk to us about that?

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Yeah? So, as far as just heart rate monitors goal,
any good company's chess strap is going to do a
good job. There's you know, a Polar, a Garmin, you
know sun To which is much around, But any of
any of those good chess chop companies out there, they're
going to do a good job of percorring your heart
rate where things where you break downs when you're wearing
an armband or a wristband or whatever else and you're

(22:28):
trying to do you know, workouts or high intensity that
it's just not very accurate. But the point of Morpheus
was to help guide people and building their cardiovascar fitness
rather than just saying here's your heart rate as you
did the workout, which is most of what Polari of
the app for're doing. Here's a heart rate monitor, here's
your workout. It just shows you what your heart rate was.
What Morpheus does is looks at your HRV, which we

(22:49):
can talk about if you want heart rate variability, and
then we give you heart rate zones for that day
based on where you were at. So here's your lower intensity,
which is mostly zone too, here's your moderate intensity, and
here's your high intents density. And what other apps and
systems do is just say that you're You're always at
the same heart rate as the same at high intensity.
So that means they'll say, okay, ninety percent above that's
high intensity, or seventy eighty percent that zone two. But

(23:12):
the reality is the body is dynamic. As your recovery changes,
as your fitness changes, those intensities change. So just like
a certain weight in the bar sometimes feels heavy and
sometimes feels light based on your recovery, it's the same
thing with metabolic training. Sometimes the level of exertion is
a higher intensity because you're more fatigued. Sometimes it's a
lower intensity because you're less fatigued. So Morpheus gives you

(23:33):
just a more individualized heart rate training each day. It
gives you zones that change like they're not static set
in stone heart rate zones, they're dynamic based on your
body at that point in time. So that's the first
thing that Morpheus does different. And then the second thing
is we give you a weekly amount of cardio to
shoot for at those different intensities. So we give you

(23:53):
a certain number of minutes and your lower intensity or
zone two, a certain number of minutes your modern intensity,
and a certain number of minutes and your high intensity
on where we think you need to do what we
think you need to do to improve your cardiovascular fitness.
And so it's giving these weekly goals to shoot for
at these different levels of intensity. So the Morpheus chess
strap itself, it's a great chess strap, but the chest
strap itself isn't dramatically different than anything else. It's the

(24:16):
app that's trying to give people coaching and guidance towards
meeting the goals of different levels of intensity each week
that they need. And the way that we built that
was by looking at different people the Morpheus database. We
looked at both men and women. We looked at women
and men of different fitness levels, and then we looked
at what they did for twelve week periods, and we
separated out who improved and who didn't, and we tried

(24:37):
to find the trends in the people that we saw
improvements and in terms of how they spent their time.
And something that was very interesting and not surprising. I
guess it's the people who had lower fitness to start with,
both men and women, who did a much higher percentage
high intensity, they didn't improve as much as the people
did a higher percentage of low intensity. What we found
is people didn't really need that much high intensity to improve.

(24:59):
Talking when I say high intensity, I'm talking you know,
really going at at ninety percent or above, depending where
you're at. It was as low as like five to
fifteen minutes a week in the people it saw consistent progress.
And the people that were doing like fifty minutes hour,
hour and a half of that really high intensity, they
either plateau it went the wrong direction, particularly at low
lower fitness levels, because I probably just couldn't recover from it.

(25:22):
So what Morpheus does, like I said, is it's going
to try to give you a guideline of how much
volume and intensity you should do across a week to
get your cardiovasca fit. This improved, and that's what Morphage
is doing differently, and we're going to continue to build
on that. But I just think giving people coaching and
guidance is more and people more important than just giving
you your heart rate number. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
So it's able to so it's able to kind of
take your vitals or stats and then it creates a
custom range.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah, give you exactly use it. Yeah, and then.

Speaker 5 (25:56):
As you improve, it keeps adjusting exactly.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
So each week what happens is Morpheus looks at how
much car do you did eat last week, It looks
at what your recovery level was, whether or not you
hit those goals. It's set for you, and then it
changes the goals for the next week. Each each Monday,
it's basically resetting what those weekly goals are. So if
it says if it looks at last week and it says, oh,
you didn't hit your goals, or it said maybe you

(26:21):
did hear your goals, but your recovery you just wasn't
what it should have been, it'll lower those goals a bit,
it'll change it down a bit. Or if it sees like, oh,
you hit all your goals, your recovery looks great, it'll
increase those goals. So it's constantly trying to adjust to
what your body is doing. And if you're consistently hitting
your goals, it's seeing your cardiovascar. If it has improved,
those numbers will keep trending up. They'll keep going up
over time to help you progress. If it's not seeing that,

(26:42):
then you'll keeping the same or it'll start dropping them.
So it's again it's this first level of using good
data to help you make better decisions about training. So
you're not guessing of how much do I need this week?
Am I making progress? It's going to do that hard
work for you and help guide you along as you
try to improve your VO two max arobic fitness.

Speaker 5 (27:01):
Okay, okay, this is so incredible.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Could you use it like a compu trainer that's just
what I'm familiar with, Like a Wahoo Kicker. Could I
be doing my kicker workout but or or you're giving
me the amount of time? I'm wondering if you can
have both, Like what is your app live while you're
doing it?

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Yeah, so we're giving so we're giving the amount of
time each week, We're not necessarily giving the amount of
time each day Okay, I'm giving you a weekly target
of different levels of intensities. How you get that is
really up to you. Now we have intervals built in
the app. You can choose to use those intervals to
get some of those from zone too up to different
types of rules I use, but it's up to you.
You can go do whatever workout you want to do them.

(27:44):
The Morphius chess Strapp will record your workout and then
you can upload the app afterwards, or you can use
the phone to see it live while you're training. It's
up to you however you want to do it. You
can use garment watches and the garment will record your
work up a garment and Morphius however you want to
do it. But you can do whatever workouts you think
are you know, appropriate or whatever you have time for it,
and then upload Amorpheus and I'll show you you know

(28:06):
how many minutes you've completed towards each of those three
intensity zones each week, so you can do whatever you want.
And I think that's an important thing. It's being flexible,
but making sure you get in the number of minutes
per week that you need, because ultimately the most important
thing is just that total amount of training and the
intensity to train, how exactly you do that, it's really
less important as long as it's you know, safe, and

(28:27):
it's not doing something that's hard on your body, that's
you know, pound your joints or whatever. But if you
do it in different ways that you find enjoyable and
you can be consistent with, that is really important as
long as you do it you know the right amount, and.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
The right amount is individual individual, Okay, but probably a
minimum of five minutes in the red zone.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
So yeah, I mean we're broke it up over a week. Yeah,
it's really not much. Like I said, I was pretty shocked,
I mean, maybe not that shocked at how little time
we saw people spending high intensities that were seeing consistent improvements.
So I looked at improvements over twelve weeks in our system.
And that's an important thing I want to point out
because there's been I don't know if i'd call it
a backlash, but like a recent kind of pushback against

(29:12):
doing Zone two from a lot of the scientists who
did a lot of high intensity training, and their argument
is kind of what you asked about forth, like, oh,
we don't think Zone two is really the best because
people don't have enough time. And again that's true. If
you aren't going to spend more than thirty minutes or
a week or sixty minutes, that's fine. You probably want
to spend a good amount of that doing higher intensity.
But what we found was that really was not that

(29:33):
much high intensity that people needed to see improvements. It
was a pretty small amount. And then again, secondly, if
your goal is to make long term progress and all
you use is high intensity, how do you progress that?
You can't progress it because you're just doing all high
intensity to begin with. So I think we just have
to take a longer term, more sustainable view of fitness
and individualize that process. If you want to see again

(29:56):
long term consistent results.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, Well, going back to HRV, so can we talk
about what that is and why we care about it?

Speaker 3 (30:06):
Yeah, So I'll try to make this as short as
possible to make a long talk about just HRV. But
your body has what's called the autonomic nervous system, and
people have probably heard about the basics. Okay, there's there's
one part of this called this stress response, or this
it's the sympathetic called the fight or flight. People have
probably heard about the fight or flight. So when your body,

(30:27):
and we want to think about these two systems as
like a dial, So when your body needs energy to
fight or flight, that it means to work out, to
deal with mental stress, to do anything that requires your
body to move around, be active. Your body turns that
dial up and it releases hormones like adrenaline and nora,
adrenaline and cortisol. It does all these things to facilitate
your body doing something that requires that response. So anytime

(30:50):
you're getting mentally stressed out, or you doing a physical stress,
or you're doing anything like that, your sympathetic system turns
on so you have the energy, right, that's one part.
The other part is you have to call the parasympathetic
side of that, and it's the other part of that
automic nervous system. That system is to rest, digest, and recover.
So it's rather than turning the energy up into activity

(31:11):
or stress, it's turning energy back into recovery and regeneration.
It's more anabolic. It's driving all the things the other direction.
So these two systems work together to deal with all
the stress that you're faced with on a daily basis.
So as you're going about your day, you're doing things,
they're stressful, but you don't want to always have that on,
so your other side kicks turns it back down. And

(31:31):
these these are the fundamentals of how your body survives.
It needs energy to do something stressful right now, but
then needs energy to recover from that stress afterwards. Right
we lift weights or we do cardio, we need to
recover from that. So while we're lifting weights, the sympathetic
system kicks on. When we were recovering from that, the
parishroech kicks on and the sympathech system goes down. When

(31:51):
we're sleeping, we're going through cycles where the parasymptech system
is more active. It's helping us facilitate recovery all these
sorts of things. So I say this because this is
something that we lose as age as we age, and
this is how I would What I would determine is resilience. Okay,
biological resilience, meaning we're really good at coping with the
things that stress us out as we are young, and

(32:12):
we start to lose that ability as we get older.
And I'm not talking about just workouts, but we can
use workouts. For example, when I'm twenty, I can work
out and recover really quickly. When I'm forty, I can
tell you from the experience, it takes me longer now
to recover than when I was twenty. When I'm sixty,
it's going to take me longer recovery. When I'm eighty,
et ceter If I'm still around, hopefully it's going to
take me even longer. And it's because we lose the

(32:32):
ability of those two systems to work together, and we
lose the ability of those two systems to coordinate and
function at a high level. That's what resilience is. Resilience
is turning on the right dial at the right time
to make sure your body has energy it needs. And
I'm going to another good example. If I get sick
when I'm twenty, I'm probably not gonna be sick very long,
maybe a couple of days. I get sick when I'm forty,
it might take me three or four days. Maybe I

(32:52):
have more symptoms if I get If I get the
flu when I'm seventy or eighty, I can die. And
flu kills people. I mean, viruses that do nothing to
us in our twenties kill us in our seventies or
eighties because we're less resilient. So all that said, what
we are measuring with HRV is that rest and digest
recovery system, that parasympathetic system, and so we are looking

(33:13):
at the baseline activity, the base level of how much
that system is turned on at a given time, and so,
hopefully might not make some sense why it's important because
the more effectively that system works, the more stress we're
able to cope with throughout our lifetime, not just training stress,
but physical, our mental stress, environmental stress, all the things

(33:33):
that we have to deal with. Our body can deal
with more effectively. If that rest, digest or recovery system
is functioning better, we are better at turning off stress,
we are better at dealing with recovering from any sort
of other thing we're throwing our bodies, and we live
longer and more resilient, we're healthier in general. So what
we do is we measure HRV that parasympthetic system by

(33:54):
looking at your heart rate and then looking at the
rhythm of the heart rate. Without being too technical, we
can hell by the way the heart is beating, the
patterns beating in how active that parasympathetic nervous system is.
That more variability we see in your heart rate, it
means that parasympathetic system, that rest digest recovery system is
higher and that sympathetic stress system is lower. And so

(34:16):
by measuring that over time, we can see how much
stress your body is under, how resilient it is, and
whether or not we are going in the right direction.
Seeing our bodies resilient increase over time. And so it's
a really really powerful tool because over time, to me,
stress is either the gas pedal or it's the break
and how quickly we age. If we deal stress poorly,

(34:39):
that stress accelerates our aging and we get age, we
age much faster. If we can use stress in a
positive way through training, we can turn that more into
the break and slow things down. The difference is in
how our bodies react to it, and that's what we
can measure through HRV Okay.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
So that's kind of the million dollar question is what
if we can't deal with stress well, I mean, because
all of that the physical stress, aside of just psychological
emotional and that what toll that that knock on effect
has throughout weeks, months, years, years.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yes, Yeah, The biggest thing is I think people like
to compartmentalize or put their stress in the silos, Like
they say, Okay, I'm stressed out from work. Now I'm
going to go get a really hard workout to get
it out. Well, I'm not saying there might be some
maybe there's some benefits that, but that stress from work
impacts the stressing work. It amplifies the stress need workout.

(35:37):
A lack of sleep will then amplify everything else after that.
So stress is this big picture accumulation of how much
total stress your body is under. You can't compartmentalize and
be like, oh, I was really stressed out at work,
so I'm gonna get a heavy workout in to like
get my mind right. Well, maybe it helped your mental state,
but if you put your body under even more stress,

(35:58):
that might have just slowed everything down. I mean, it works.
So people just have to recognize stress is accumulation of everything,
and the way that you get better at dealing with
it is managing it as a whole and recognizing they're
all connected. So if I got a very bad night
of sleep because of whatever happened before, I'm going to
take that into consideration and Morephie's going to show me
my recovery is lower and that's going to affect my

(36:19):
decision of how much workout working out I need to do,
or if I need to do some recovery strategies, or
if I need to spend time just meditating and relaxing,
or you need to do something along those lines. So
I'm trying to make decisions about how do I manipulate
those dials without letting myself get stuck in that chronically
high stress sympathetic state. I want to make sure that
my training, my nutrition, my sleep, my mental state, all

(36:42):
of those things are balancing out in a way that's
productive for me, rather than just keeping stress upon stress
upon stress and ultimately paying the price in injuries, in sickness,
in just maladaptive health and all those sorts of negative things.
So I think one is just being aware of it,
and that's what help you do, and then two is
being willing to do things on both ends, turning down

(37:05):
the stress as much as you can from life and
whatever capacity possible, but then recognizing that your workouts may
be more productive if you take a rest day, or
if you take a recovery day, or if you go
do you know something that's productive from that standpoint versus
just I'm going to go in the gym and work
out as hard as it can every day. So again
it comes down to connecting the dots between lifestyle and jim.

(37:26):
Those things need to be together, not this separate picture.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Okay, and that's so important. Thank you for that. That's
what I personally hear every day is women won't give themselves.
They won't let they think that it's their missing out
or they're failing if they take an extra rest day.
So they really won't give themselves permission to despite all

(37:52):
of these other things happening in their life, to really
dial it back and say, maybe this is this season,
that could be a couple of weeks or maybe a
couple of months. Isn't the time for me to keep
trying to pr on you know, a four rep deadlift
for examp.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Yeah, exactly. And I think, to me, that's the I
wouldn't call it the problem with high intensity per se,
but it's the problem with the high intensity mindset. And
that high intensity mindset comes from this idea that high
intensity gets me the best results. That's why I have
to do anything less is not effective and that's just
not the case, right A high intensity Yes, it's important.
It's a big party equation. But if that's not what

(38:29):
your body needs because your body is not able to
recover as well because it's under all this other stress,
then the lower intensity session is going to be better
because it's going to help your body recover. A lower
intensity session just drives blood flows some zone two stuff
twenty three minutes that you're going to feel better after
that session. If I go to the gym and I'm
already stressed out from everything else and I do twenty
three minutes of high intensity, I'm gonna feel worse after

(38:51):
that session, and that's going to accumulate over time. So
we just again we have to get away from this
idea of thinking that if I don't go at one
hundred percent or I don't do high intensity, it's not productive,
or you know, I have to hours and hours and
hours zone two where it's not effective. That's not true either.
It's about just thinking what is the right thing for
me to do based on where my body's at and
where my head's at and all these sorts of things,

(39:13):
and recognizing low is often very very valuable, and a
lot of times the lower end of things is going
to be better for my body than just going in there
and trying to smash myself, because if you do that
too often, you will pay the cost eventually. I mean,
this is where we get burnout and injuries and you know,
fatigue and just all the things that come along with
doing too much. And I think the problem is people say, oh,

(39:34):
I didn't do that much, I couldn't be overtrained. Well,
you could be overtrained based on what your body was
capable of because you had this other stress that was
driving the inability of your body to recover. So even
a small amount can be too much if your body
can't recover from it.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, I mean, and moving every day is what we
want people to do. Anyways, the zone too, you recover
and what an hour or two?

Speaker 3 (39:59):
Yeah, because it's lower intensity, it takes much less time
to recover from it. If you do a small amount
of it, it can actually promote recovery a bit because it's
just driving blood flow. So honestly, for me, if I'm
just feeling like, man, I had a tough workout yesterday,
or I didn't get a good night a sleep, or
whatever the case may be, I'll sometimes just go do
twenty minutes on the bike of zone two and some
mobility work and I feel great. I feel better afterwards.

(40:21):
That then allows me to go back the next day
in the gym and get a really good workout versus
getting mediocre workout because I'm still kind of tired and
trying to just get it done. I would rather say, Okay, no,
today's not my day. I'm going to put promote recovery.
I'm going to be you know, in the zone two
range and move and just be active and feel good.
Then the next day I feel so much better. I
can go back and get the work out and I
actually want to get in and rather than again trying

(40:42):
to just do high intensity of sake, I'm doing high intensity.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, oh I know within the first five minutes every time,
I'm like, not happening today.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Yeah, And I'll say too. The biggest thing that people
you recognize is it's obvious, but we don't always think
about as much. Is as we age, we just can't
do as much. I can tell you that I'm forty
six now, I can probably only do seventy percent of
what I could have done in my twenties. Doesn't mean
I couldn't do it better. Way to say it is
I could do it, but I shouldn't do it because
if I do what I did my twenties, I'll pay
much higher cost than I would have in my twenties.

(41:14):
If I do the same program I did twenty years ago,
my recovery would not last very long, and I'd be
fatigued and I'd probab run into some injuries and problems.
My twenties I could do it, I can't do it
right now and be successful with it. So we just
have to be aware of what our own you know,
limitations are and just be smart about it rather than
trying to again, just do as much as we can
for sake of doing as much as we can.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, and to circle back to cardio, do you have
cannot be done a hit session on any piece of
equipment or for the women that aren't going to a
gym and don't have any equipment at home, I know
what I prefer, but I know I have a bike
at home. But if I didn't and there's no equipment,

(41:56):
what would your option be?

Speaker 3 (41:58):
Yeah, I mean you can do body weight calisenics, you
can do you know, jump robe, you can jog in place,
you can do light stuff. I mean it's hard if
you have zero equipment, But just getting your heart rate
up is the most important thing. However, it is that
you get the hurry up is less important as long
as again you're not doing something that's unsafe. But you
can play around with it. I mean, you can google
body weight exercises and there's millions of different exercises you

(42:19):
can do to get hurried up. The most important thing,
like I said, is just getting your hurry up. How
you do it is up to you.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Okay, good to know.

Speaker 5 (42:28):
I would have never thought you would have said jog
in place.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
I mean, if that's what. So you know, during during COVID,
I did a I realized people couldn't go to gym,
and so I did a gym free conditioning program and
a ton of people did it. It was just all body
weight exercises and jogging in place that they couldn't go outside.
And then I was I guess it wasn't shocked, but
I got a huge number of emails and people who
were like, I actually made more progress doing this, and

(42:52):
I would normally do going to gym because I would
just you know, was focused on the Caryavascar side of
things that wasn't overloaded myself as much and all of
a sudden or two when up my heart rates down,
like I feel better. So you know, you don't have
to have a ton of equipment to do it. You
just have to be consistent with it and find something
that works.

Speaker 5 (43:09):
Yeah, back to the basics.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, bodyweight jump squatch is a do
those for ten seconds, rest thirty seconds. I mean really
simple things. Get your hurt right up and give you
full strength and cardio at the same time in that sense.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
And that's it, and thank goodness that's the case, because
then it really leaves nobody out There isn't something that
somebody can't do at home versus you know, in a gym.
Obviously you probably want, if and when possible for someone
to be in the gym setting just for the variety
of equipment. But it is good that we can do it.

(43:44):
You know, not every not every female is going to
ever get to a gym for X, Y and Z reason,
so they can't improve. They can build muscle, they all
of that can can.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
Have an hit. Yeah, I mean at home you can
do bodyweight squad, you can do lunges, you can just
step ups onto your couch. I mean there's single leg
squats in the couch, I mean push ups. Obviously, There's
a million things you can do at home. You can
get a couple of sets of dumbells or callibill. There's
lots and lots of ways to exercise at home. And
I would say that's the one good thing. Maybe not
the one good thing, but social media gives you so
many ideas for how to do exercises with different implements.

(44:19):
I mean, there's so many things out there that some
are crazy, but there's just a lot of people out
there showing you how to do different exercises with minimal equipment,
and that's that's a good thing. I think. I would
say the most important thing for most people is just
finding something that they enjoy doing. You know, as simple
as that sounds. If you hate doing something, most people
aren't going to do it very long. So it's just
finding ways to work out that you enjoy, you know,

(44:42):
whether it's staying at home, going to gym, playing pickup
ball or whatever. I mean, just find things that you
enjoy doing and you're gonna be consistent with and that
you feel better after doing than before. I think that
is an underrated thing. If you feel terrible afterwards, probably
not going to do it as long as you think.
If you feel good afterwards, you're energized. Maybe you're tired,
but you enjoyed the process. You feel bit. You know

(45:04):
you feel tired, but energize. If you feel like that
after something, you're going to keep doing it. I think
figuring those things out for yourself is really important.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
So I'm curious what your week looks like.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
My week, So yeah, I do. So. I have a
home gym where I do most of my Zone two stuff.
So I have a woodway treadmill, I have a elliptical,
I have a Kaijer bike, a bunch of stuff my
old gym, so I'll do a lot of the lower
intensity stuff Zone two type stuff on that, and then
for my high intensity, I play racketball, which is just
a way of running around higher intensity in a competitive way.

(45:38):
I really personally don't love high intensity if it's not
somewhat competitive with people. So I'll do either one day
a week of racketball or two days a week of
competitive racketball. That's where I get my heart rate up,
and then I'll lift two to three days a week.
Now and when I was in my twenties, it was
a very different story. I would lift four or five
days a week. My cardio was a much smaller portion
of that. But as I've gotten older, my priorities have shifted,

(46:01):
and there's really good research we can talk about it,
but mostly what we see in research and what I
can just tell you anecdotally is two to three times
a week and strength training is more than enough for
most people to hit the amount of strength they need
to maximize the longevity benefit. There's correlational studies, meaning they
look at people who different do different amounts of strength training,
and they look at how long they live, and they

(46:22):
find and papers are clear like two to three sessions
a week is where you see people living the long
It doesn't mean that's the cause, it just means it correlates.
But we don't see people doing four or five six
sessions a week of strength training living longer on average,
and people do a lot less. So again, I don't
think most people need to spend more than two or
three sessions a week lifting weights. If their goal is longevity.

(46:42):
It doesn't mean they can't. They love it, but I
don't think it's from a health standpoint as beneficial as
doing two or three sessions and then making sure you
get your cardio in, because if you're lifting five days
a week, where's your cardio coming in? It's probably not
so personally Like I used to lift a lot five
six days a week. Now I lift two to three
compending the week. My high intensity either one day a
week of playing rack bll games, sometimes two days a

(47:04):
week of playing rack ball games, and then at least
once a week I do recovery work. So the spy
go too, and they have hot hot tubs and cold
punges and saunas and steam rooms. I'm getting I'm getting
a sauna built from my house here. I've got a pool,
a hot tub, and then the sauna will be put in.
I have a river I can jump in for my
cold punge. But at least one day a week I
do active recovery like that. I get a massage, keeat

(47:26):
my soft tissue, that kind of stuff. So I just
kind of mix things up, depending on again my recovery.
If I'm having a if I'm having a lower recovery week,
my sleep's not what it should have been, then I'll
do one tight one day of high intensity if it's
looking good. Then I'll do two days, but the rest
of it's you know, lower intensity.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Okay, good to know. I'm I'm going to start booking
a weekly massage because it is part of recovery.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
It is. I mean, I think there's a lot to
be I mean, again, it's not accessible for everybody. It's
not cheap. You know, massages, they cost money. But you
can do soft tissue work on yourself. You can get
a thera gun or get a phone roller. I mean,
there's lots of ways to just spend time doing some
sour stoft tissue. Exactly how you do it's up to you.
But I just think there's benefit to doing some manual

(48:10):
therapy on yourself or having someone else to do it
for you once a week. And on that day where
I do that, it's a it's an off day, it's
a relaxing day. So again I'll do some sort of
hydrotherapy and then some sort of staff tissue massage at
least once a week, and that, to me, it makes
a big difference.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I'm I'm implementing that right away.
So Jil, this has been a fantastic conversation. Where can
listeners find more about your you and your work so
that they can reach out if they are interested.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Sure, two things eight weeks out dot com just a number.
Eight weeks out. Dot com is where I have education
and content really different things. Have courses for trainers. I
have a eight week BO two max program called Metamorphosis,
and then Morpheus itself, like we talked about, is just
train with Morpheus dot com if they want to learn
more about that. So either one of those just fined
or they can find me an Instagram coach Joel Jamison.

(48:59):
But to any of those of.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Work, perfect well, thank you so much for coming on
the body Pod and sharing all of your expertise. We
really appreciate your.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Time, no problem, happy to come on.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
Thanks for listening everyone.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
five star rating and sharing the body Pod with your
friends