Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - How Gemma Atkinson Builds Her Body at 40, With Her Personal Trainer

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Ever wondered how Gemma Atkinson really trains - and what it takes to build a body like hers?In this candid conversation, three times former Women's Health cover star Gemma sits down with her personal trainer Elliot Upton, founder of Ignite, to reveal the real strategies behind her strength, body confidence, and long-term fitness.From busting the biggest weightlifting myths to navigating hormones, the menstrual cycle, and menopause, this is your ultimate guide to training smart - not just hard. This episode contains a paid partnership with Samsung. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Amex Platinum, you have access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. So your experience before takeoff is a taste of what's to come. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. The one thing that's going to, A, make you live longer, even if you have to go into hospital with, God forbid, you get cancer or heart disease and you spend a month in hospital bed, the faster your body wastes away, the faster you're going to die. Yeah.

The more muscle you have, the longer you have as a buffer, zone but in the UK by the time people are 60 they're ready to just pack it in they go home they watch the TV the whole point of going into the gym is to cause damage is to break something you allow your body enough time enough food enough rest enough sleep to rebuild that structure that you broke it will build itself back 5% stronger the issue that people have is that they're constantly digging a hole constantly digging a hole trying to train every single day thinking that it's doing them some good and they just don't recover from it So today, one of my favourite apps now already, we're joined by Elliot Upton.

Some of you may be familiar with Elliot from my own Instagram account. He's the owner of Elements Gym in Marbeah. He's the creator of the Ignat Coaching app. He's very passionate about encouraging us ladies to pick up the weights and always aim for strength over aesthetics. He helps women work with their menstrual cycles as opposed to against it, and he's also my personal trainer. Welcome, Elliot.

Thank you very much. What an intro. Thank you for flying over from Marbeia. No issue. It's nice to come and sign out. It's nice to be in London in the sun for a change. Usually when I'm here, it's raining or cold or windy or horrible, yes. I wanted to start, Elliot, by saying, obviously you're a PT,

you're incredible fountain of knowledge when it comes to health and wellness. But you haven't always been. I mean, now you're the picture of health and wellness, but that wasn't always the way for you, was it? No, so I spent the majority of my life very overweight. I still struggle with my weight now, but I think it's one of those things that, it's allowed me to learn more and try to overcome the things that most people maybe suffer from, but potentially the PTs or the trainers that they have available to them, they were maybe ex-athletes or they're genetically gifted.

It kind of helps me with the different, I get a different perspective sometimes to be able to help clients out and having gone through the things that I'm trying to help them to, I think it puts me in quite a good place for that. It makes it more relatable, I think. I always joke with Gawker. If there was a midwife, he was delivering me here and Tiago, I said if they've not had a kid, I don't want them to tell me I'm okay because they don't know what I'm going through.

And I think, you know, because a lot of people do assume a PT is, like you say, genetically gifted or has always been in shape and it's easier to preach to someone about how easy it is to be in shape if you have always been in shape. But I think you give hope to people who want to make a change, want to make a difference because you've done it yourself. You've not just taught the talk, you've walked the walk, so to speak. I'd like the thing you wouldn't ask someone to teach you how to drive who's never driven the car. So I do think it really, really helps.

And there's always certain things within, especially a weight loss journey, it's always the same mind games that everybody has to go through. You don't realize maybe how long it's going to take. You don't realize that there's going to be ups and downs. There's the days when you wake up feeling like a blob. Two days later, you'll wake up feeling leaner that you've ever felt. You kind of need to know having been there to keep pushing through and kind of some of the things I said to the clients all the time,

dig in and just stand your ground, push through it. And it really does help because, I think it's very, very easy if you haven't gone through it yourself to just kind of blindly pass blame to a client. And don't be wrong, a client's responsibility, they have to take responsibility for the actions and therefore the outcomes. But there's also a level of, I'm not to say sympathy. Sympathy is the wrong word, empathy.

It's really interesting to hear a man frame it like that for me because the way you just described a weight loss journey where you can wake up one day and feel like a blob and somehow you've put on half a stone overnight and then two days later, I feel fabulous again. And I thought that was a very female state of affairs. So it's interesting to hear that men share that experience as well. Massively, massively.

I mean, I think, you know, there's all kinds of theory behind it, but for hormones and your ability to retain water, I think the fatty you've been, i.e., the more fat mass you've had in the past, the great your capacity for water fluctuations, i. water retention overnight. I think the difference is, you know, I can wake up 100 kilos or 106 kilos.

over a 24-hour period. That's how much my weight will fluctuate overnight. But obviously over time, you realize, A, it's physiologically impossible to spawn six kilos of fat overnight. But I think our ignorance is a strength as men. We get on the scale, we see a different number, and somewhere in our brain we'll be like, it must be muscle.

So then we'll disappear. Whereas I think there's more pressure on females, they'll think, okay, I've got fat, maybe a lack of education as well for both male and female, that they don't understand the bodies, the shifts in water because of sleep or estrogen levels or the time in their cycle or whatever it may happen to be. I think it plays with females' heads a lot more than it plays with men's heads because you have a tendency to overthink what's happening there,

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intended for general wellness and fitness purposes only. And we do focus on the scales. And even though, even throughout the content of women's health, we preach it's not about what you weigh because actually muscle weighs, weighs more than fat. And you can be gaining weight, but getting leaner and building muscle.

But it's quite a female trait to focus on that scale. So however much we don't want to admit it to ourselves, it's something that a lot of women are slave to. For sure. Depending on the program, it's something I really don't put any emphasis on. I mean, how often do I ask you your weight? I think three times in the last time in a year.

It's just not relevant to me. Like, I'd rather see progress via pitches. That's relevant to me because I can see what's realistically happening. Plus the head games that are played for a lot of people by weighing themselves. They're just not worth it. It's a risk versus reward trade-off. Like if weighing yourself is going to be the thing that knocks you off track, because inevitably when you see a number you don't want,

your confidence is knocked, your self-worth is knocked, you think this isn't working, you'll go out and cheat for two days, have a massive binge and anything. This plan obviously isn't for me. I'll move on to the next one. Or I'll move to some more extreme fat loss or dieting method, which also isn't right, rather than just saying, again, stay the course, dig your heels in,

keep pushing. So from my point of view, if I have a client who I know, and it is on an individual basis, I know you can't handle it, stop wearing yourself. I don't care. And I will say it just like, I don't care. You shouldn't either. And generally when that happens, you'll find compliance goes up.

Their self-confidence goes up. They start seeing progress because they measure it in different ways. You know, they're fitting into different clothes. They're seeing things day to day. And also, I think preparation is a massive thing, especially with the menstrual cycle. You know that when you're pre-menstrual, weight is going to go up. Again, I'll say, even if you are weighing yourself, don't bother that week.

Don't touch it. Yeah, it's ridiculous. It does make a big difference to people's long-term compliance by kind of knowing what to expect and what's coming and then having a bit of education on its water. It could be additional food. If your digestion slow down, you mentioned the guard that you spoke to about digestion.

Your digestion can slow down and affect your body weight by a kilo, two kilos overnight, but it's just because you haven't passed it yet. But that's not what we register as, this is my additional weight. I think, I'm fat, I'm fat. Everything goes back to fat instead of looking at what your body's doing. I actually got a voice not familiar yesterday,

reminding me that my periods next week, so it's up my magnesium from now. And I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, my period's due soon. So it's little things like that. So why would you do that? Why would you need to? Various things. So she was mentioning last time you were getting Cravers for chocolate.

Yeah, always on a period. And really, really, really common thing with chocolate is it's usually got quite high magnesium content. And your body is very smart. It knows, like when you're talking about pregnancy a minute ago, crazy cravings tend to come in pregnancy because your body's sensing something it needs and it knows where to get it.

So very often if someone's got an issue, maybe lower magnesium, the body's going to say, well, okay, I feel like something sweet, something chocolatey to, A, get some more magnesium, boost my serotonin, get that kind of little hit. So if we increase the magnesium intake, the cravings tend to disappear really, really fast for something sweet. It will also speed up digestion a little bit

because as your digestion slows down as you premenstrual. causes bloating, water retention, magnesium, especially magnesium citrate, can help to speed up digestion again, prevent you from getting bloated, prevent the water attention. So all of the things that are happening that screw with your brain,

you can put something, you can put a structure or a strategy in place to at least try, touch wood, prevent it from happening, then preventing the mind game from coming. If you do that, someone's more likely to be able to stick on a diet. It clearly did work because I upped it last time

and then teetered it off a little, obviously now. And normally now I'd know my periods due because I had like the apple crumble I've not had it. Normally I'd be like in this time give me more but I had my six last night instead of the three so that's clearly

worked for today because I haven't craved I forgot my period was due until I got Elliot's voice voice note well we think it's it's not due oh my god no it's definitely definitely due I'm making sure a lot of females can really benefit for me eating more red meat especially on their period. It would offset so many of the kind of lower energy feelings,

lethargy feelings, but a lot of women because they think that red meat is bad, tend to avoid red meat. They'll chase chicken and things like that, which is a mistake. But these things can be put in place. If you listen to the body and you know how to interpret it, it offsets a lot of the problems.

That's why I think me as obviously we're friends, but from a client perspective, why I love training with you because you mentioned the scales earlier. You don't ask me what's my current weight. You ask me what am I currently weightlifting? What am I currently moving in the gym? You have a lot of focus on strength.

And at women's health, we're trying to let people know, you know, how beneficial health-wise, for longevity, you know, your bone density, your muscle mass, especially going into perimenopause. You know, you need to have that solid frame. You need to have strength. And I was listening to another podcast and there was a lady on there. And she was a muscle specialist.

I can't remember her name. But she was saying it's the only organ in your body that we have actual control over. Gabrielle Lyons movie. Yeah, yeah. And she said, if I said to you, contract your diaphragm now. She was like, if I said contract your bladder, contract your spleen, you know. She said, if I said contract your bicep, you can. She said, so it's the only organ.

We have physical control over. We have to work with it and make sure we're all. always in control of it and we're always making it bigger because especially for women down the line it will benefit us so much. For sure. It's true of everyone, both male and female, but more, it's much more

prevalent for women because of the effects of menopause. Generally, men do more physical jobs which helps to maintain muscle mass, maintain bone density. If you're working as a female in an office and then your estrogen starts to drop as you go through menopause, bone density

is going to drop, your muscle mass is going to stop you know, building or at least maintaining it as it would in your 20s or 30s, the one thing that's going to, A, make you live longer, even if you have to go into hospital with, God forbid, you get cancer or heart disease and you spend a month in hospital bed, the faster your body wastes away, the faster you're going to die. Yeah. The more muscle you have, the longer you have as a buffer zone,

if you're on medication, if you're doing chemo, anything like that, the more muscle your body has to break down before you become critical, the better. It makes a massive difference. and then as I say with bone dense, even social stuff, your quality of life is, I think that's something that people really, they underestimate. If we look at, for example, here versus Spain,

you will still see it at 6 o'clock in the morning, you go for a walk on the Paseo down on the beach and you'll still see 85, 90-year-old couples and friends wandering around on the Paseo getting their morning walk in. Yeah, before work. It's incredible. And they're happy and they're smiling. Their quality of life is good

because it's just part of their routine, largely because of the weather, extra vitamin D is helping them out massively, these types of things. The siesters. Well, yeah, low stress, low stress lifestyle. But in the UK, by the time people are 60, they're ready to just pack it in,

they go home, they watch the TV, they sit there, you know, drinking beer, wine, body, whatever happens to be. And then, you know, wonder why the quality of life goes. Because if you don't have strong legs, you're more likely to get injured if you leave the house. You're probably really tired and lethargic walking around, so you're going to spend less time with your friends.

Maybe you don't have any friends. How many old, you know, there's an epidemic of, older people with no mates, you know, to put it bluntly, which means they get lonely and they think, okay, what do I do now? I'm 70 years old. I just wait to die. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Look with confidence while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. self-run, lift, flow and go.

Explore the new Peloton Cross-Training Treadplus at OnePeloton.ca. I thought the strength training message was getting through. And I like to think due to brands like women's health, more women are lifting weights. However, I hosted an event last week. And three different women, two of which were my age, 40s, one was in her 60s, but I did absolutely look incredible for that age. And they all said they didn't lift weights.

And they all made a comment on how strong I looked. which is great because I see that as a compliment. And I said, it's all about lifting weights. I don't do much cardio. I'm in the gym lifting weights. And all three of them said, I don't know where to start. Oh, I'm intimidated. And you forget quite how intimidating that is for someone who hasn't done it before.

And we're sat in London here. So the gyms do tend to be quite mixed, although not that mixed, because if you go where all the squat racks are, even in the very fancy Soho gym I go to is predominantly men. But outside of London and in more local areas, the weights area and gym are dominated by men. And that's intimidating for women. I agree completely.

But it's one of those things that I think there's a few strategies that would usually say to someone is everyone that has ever stepped foot in a gym the first time they went in there was bricking it. Absolutely bricking it. You felt like you didn't know what to do. You felt like you looked stupid. You were embarrassed. You didn't want to ask for help.

Everyone's been there. You've been there, right? Look at Gemma now. The amount of people who are going to be listening to this who are looking at Gem and thinking, God, what I wouldn't give to be like that. She was in exactly that place at some point. And you just have to do it.

The second thing I would say is that, again, as gym goes, how often do you look at someone in a gym and think you look stupid? What, never. Right? No one ever does, whether male or female. So the story that you're creating in your head to say, I'm nervous, I feel out of place. that's a million times worse than the reality when you actually get in there.

Third thing is, and this is important, choose the right gym, choose the right type of exercise. Because even if it's starting with classes or starting training at home, you know, a lot of the stuff that we do, the clients will train at home, but I will say to them, you need to think long term about getting in a gym because, or at the very least, like Gem's got equipment at home, whatever it happens to be, because you're going to need to do loaded training. You know, jumping around and doing insanity or something like that is only going to, going to get you so far. You're going to have to start doing loaded training. And this is especially true for, you know, as women get older, as men get older, your joints don't work in the same

way. So if you're bouncing around your living room and your entire training regime is made up of jumping, your ankles are going to go, your knees are going to go, your back's going to go real fast. Whereas if you learn to progressively weight train, your joints are going to be healthy, they're going to have greater range of motion. It does nothing but good for you, but it takes time. And that that bravery to just get started. And then on top of that, if you can go on with structure, don't go on blind. Where do you start?

Because if you don't know how to hinge or deadlift correctly, then you could end up doing yourself from damage, you know, if your posture is not correct. So in that situation, what's your advice to someone? My advice would be to reach out to someone who knows what they're talking about or read a publication like yours where you're getting the information. The information is there. Absolutely.

You just have to be willing to, a, look for it, be not be overwhelmed initially because I think it's really easy to see so many different things, not know what you're supposed to do, and then that makes a whole situation worse. You know, more than anyone I know with your size of profile,

you communicate so much in your DMs. You answer everything. You're really open and engaged with your audience. The majority of people in the fitness industry are in the fitness industry because they want to help people. So if you're afraid to reach out, you know, you're kind of only cutting off your nose to spite your face. Reach out and generally people are going to be very, very willing to help.

And, you know, and there's, like I say, the amount of resources that you guys put out, the amount of resources and there's millions of people like me in the world who are happy to help. You just kind of have to say, be brave, communicate with someone, make sure you feel good with them, make sure you feel secure them. Because if you don't, if you're going to it because someone said, oh, yeah, go with this guy. you don't feel right, this whole problem is going to be made 10 times worse because your first experience with someone is going to be, I didn't like that at all. You know, they don't understand me, they don't empathize me, they don't understand the situation

I'm in, but you do just kind of have to start. I wish I could give more a better answer to that. And then as soon as you start moving, you'll start to learn more, you know, there's online resources, there's a million different things that can help. Well, if, because when Gemma was on our cover, because you were on the cover of women's health in January this year, best selling issue for two years. Yes.

You're shame in for that. Earlier provided your training plan, which is available to women's health members now if they become a member of the Women's Health Collective, but I used it. And I consider myself someone with a higher than average knowledge base

for training, but yet sometimes I'm stuck to know what to do. So I took your, and I've used it ever since, I probably should shake it up a bit now. But it's, so there's, are resources there on platforms like Women's South Collective and that you wrote that training plan,

you're a personal trainer that the average person probably doesn't have access to. And yet you work with women like Gemma who are in incredible shape. So I would urge the viewers here to sign up to the Women's Health Collective because they can get access to your plan. Absolutely. Yeah, it's the exact plan that we've done as well, isn't it, on the Ignite? Because people, but I think as well what people fail to realise,

and again, Elliot's very realistic with this. is that the training is fantastic. You have to do it. People always say to me, it's easy for you. You've got a gym at home. I always say it's easy to get in the gym, yeah. It doesn't make the workout any easier. I've also got a kitchen at home and a sofa with a big TV in front of it.

That's just as easy. People always, I think, look for a reason not to do something. And I think it's because they're not quite there mentally yet to make the change, which is completely fine. They will be one day, but they take it out on others that they can't, or they're not ready to do stuff. And another thing is nutrition. I mean, that plays a key part in it, doesn't it?

When we spoke to a good doctor and he was saying he uses the 80 to 20 method, which I personally love because it's 80% what your body needs to thrive and to keep sleeping check and hormones regulated. Or 20% is for, if there's a birthday coming up, you don't want to be that person saying, I don't want birthday cake because it's too, you know, I don't want to have gin and tonic with the girls. You know, he's like you have to thrive,

and part of thriving is enjoying it. So with nutrition, Elliot set me not a nutrition plan, but a macro. No, macros. And as long as you have the common sense to know that, you know, macros in a Mars bar are completely different to an avocado or whatever, so you're not going to blow it.

But my point is you really can't out-training a bad diet, can you? No, not at all. Diet is everything, and it's, you know, also context is involved, the whole very surface argument of calories in calories out. Yes, theoretically, that is true when it comes to weight gain or weight loss. But weight being the operative word there, you know, you can eat whatever, 2,000 calories of sugar. If it's just sugar and carbs and crap, you're going to lose a lot of muscle.

You lose a lot of muscle, your metabolism slows down. Eventually it's going to bounce back the other way in that you've slowed your metabolism down enough because you've got no muscle that you start gaining fat again. You know, there's so many things here. The key, if someone is asking where do I start, the simple rule I repeat all of the time for people who don't know where to begin is eat foods, not products. Really simple. You don't have to think about it much more than that. Has it gone through any kind of process to get on my plate?

If it has, stare away from it. If it hasn't, if you could have plucked it out of the air, the ground, to see, whatever, eat it. Fine. Eat it when you're hungry because there's almost guaranteed. someone goes from eating the normal type process manufactured food to just eating natural food. It doesn't matter right, the carbs, the protein, this and the other, they can eat a lot more of it. They'll almost never be hungry. And this is a common pitfall where dieting is that people try to clean up their food and starve themselves of calories, which is why they then say, oh, I hate dieting like this, I'm suffering, I'm this, and this.

Not really, because if you eat loads of different types of meat and fish and veg and fruit and natural carbs, you're probably not going to be hungry at all because your body's completely nourished. as much as it needs to be. We're talking about calories in, calories out, and actually if you eat whole foods, you can eat much more, and calories are much less relevant if your diet is mostly made up of whole foods and grains. But is it possible to build muscle in a deficit?

If you are a larger person and you do want to burn fat, but build muscle at the same time, how is that possible if you're eating in surplus? The typical diet industry is about weight loss. You know, when you are trying to strength train, you're trying to build as much muscle as possible, at the very least preserve muscle whilst losing fat, body recomposition. Now, the bigger the deficit, the more difficult it is going to be to put on muscle.

So if you put yourself in a thousand calories worth of deficit, to try and lose fat as fast as possible, you're probably not going to build any muscle. You may risk losing it longer term. If you put yourself an a 3 to 500 calorie deficit, if your training is progressive and heavy, and your recovery is adequate in between your training sessions, then yeah, 100% you can build muscle in a deficit. You may be a bit slower,

and it's going to be dependent on the individual, you know, how well they train, their training experience. You know, if you've got a complete newbie, someone who's never stepped foot in a gym before, and they start training heavily and progressively, you could put them in a much larger deficit, their body is still going to adapt and build muscle. Because if you've got someone who's been training for 35 years,

it's going to be a little bit more difficult for them, but then there is a trade-off because they probably train more effectively. they recover better. Their body's likely had muscle. So there's always a balance, but yes, you can build muscle whilst in a deficit, provided the deficit is controlled, and the calorie, so in the recovery between sessions is adequate. So what would the optimum deficit be? I mean, realistically, we'll always judge, if it was one of our clients, we'll judge a client based on how we communicate with them initially, what we think they're capable of. Yeah. Someone who is highly motivated can manage a bigger deficit, maybe 500 to 750 calories. That would be at the higher end of what we're likely to give someone. one that we think, you know, and you can read between the lines when you have these conversations of the clients, how many diets have you done before? Have you, have any of them ever worked? Because what that generally means is it's not the diets that haven't worked. They just

haven't done them. So we know that person's likely to be less compliant, therefore giving them a much bigger deficit would be a mistake because they're going to crash and fall again, whereas we can say, right, let's put you in a 300 calorie deficit to maybe 500 at a push. It's a smaller deficit. It's going to yield slower results, but it's going to be way easier to stick to. Then, the idea is just try and make them stick to it. Because if they can get that two weeks to a month, they're going to see some quite significant changes. When they start seeing the changes, that becomes motivating.

Then potentially you can increase the deficit because I say, I know this is working now. I'm locked in on this. But then, again, there's a balance to that because when someone first starts a diet, that's when it has the greatest utility. That's when they're most motivated. So you could also do it the other way. Put them in a really big deficit initially and then scale it off a little bit in two weeks time.

but it very much depends on the person. From your mood to your skin to your gym performance, your hormone health affects everything, which is why a deeper understanding of it can be so empowering. The Samsung Galaxy Ring puts all the information you need quite literally at your fingertips. Thanks to its inbuilt partnership with natural cycles, predicting your periods and deciphering

why some days you're thriving and others, it's all about survival and self-care. Find out more. Samsung.com. Not intended for contraception, intended for users 18 plus. Users should not interpret or take clinical action on the predictions made without consultation of a qualified healthcare professional. I think people get excited as well when they physically start seeing the results and that's a motivator as well. I always say the first few weeks you're not going to see physical changes but for me it was my sleep improved a little bit. My mood improved. So you think, oh, this is maybe down to the fact that I didn't have two biscuits with every cup of tea I've had recently. You know, even like, you know, if you're someone who's, you know, are massively overweight and the thought of cutting anything out, petrifies you.

Something as simple as, you know, every Friday you go and have a burger and bag of chips. Do that, but this Friday don't have the bread. Just have the burger. Still have your cheese, you pickle, your tomato, whatever you want. Just cut out the bread. Start scaling it. Yeah. And then a couple of weeks later, have a side salad, get rid of some other chips.

Still have half the chips. And because in doing them small changes frequently, as well as training, they will start feeling a little better. And then they'll probably take it upon them to say, I don't want the burger and chips this week. I want something else. And it kind of, then when you physically feel it, you feel better about maintaining it to the point where you crave that feeling.

You know what people say. Yeah, you get those. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of the questions I always get in my DMs is, is it too late for me? I'm over 50 now. it too late for me? I've just had my third baby. Is it too late for me? Is there a specific

age that you can, there's no hope for? Because in my opinion, I'm like, you can always make a change regardless whether you're 20, 40, 70, 80. The body always responds to how you treat it. For sure, your body's going to love it irrelevant of what age you are. Like, there's no, there isn't even a balance to that. Obviously, the older you get, potentially the lighter you're going to have to start and build into it because maybe your joints are not moving away. they should. Maybe you don't have the mobility that you'd have had when you were 20s. But there is definitely, I mean, if I look at our, especially our female clients, the majority of between, say, 40 and 55, a huge amount of menopausal, perimenopausal,

postmenopausal clients. Because once they get into it, they'll tell 50 friends. Because the thing that they haven't done for the last 20 years, in a month, they start to see all of the things they'd kind of resign to, this is not going to happen for me. I'm done. and past my time, they get into it, they start to feel good, they start to feel strong, they realize that they can still make progress on things that they thought were, you know, that was yesterday for me now. It makes a huge difference. It really, really does.

And I don't think there is nobody of any age that can't benefit from learning how to weight train and progressively whether it comes from health, physique, confidence. Yeah, it's always worth it to just get started. Absolutely. And obviously you said weight training there. I was recently training for a 10K, which sounds ridiculous training for a 10K. It is only 10K,

but I'm not a runner in any way, shape or form. Still, it isn't it? Still an hour's running, that's a long time, right? You put some hours in. Yeah, yeah. But part of my sessions then, we flipped it because we obviously had to incorporate the running. And there was not a concern,

but we adjusted it because I'd built up some good glutes and some good quads. They shrank with my running. and obviously I was burning a lot more calories than usual. So in terms of like the optimum split of strength versus cardio, I know there is room for most, but is it strength at the forefront always? I would always say to try to preserve or build as much strength as you can

for as long as you can in your life, for sure, because generally running is not going to make you stronger. It's going to make you better at running. Being stronger is going to make you way better at running. It has a functional carryover to that sport because the stronger you are, you can hold a position, an endurance position for longer. No, having stronger glutes, having stronger hips means that your back and hips aren't going to be hurting quite so quickly when you're running a 10K. Having stronger quads, your legs and your knees are not going to get as fatigued.

But the same carryover is not true. Doing loads of running is not going to help you squat heavier. You know, for sure weights would come first. And, you know, is there an ideal mix? It very much depends on what you want to be great at. If I look at what we try to do is, you know, with the type of program that you guys have, as part of your subscription that we wrote. That's a case of we're trying to tick a bunch of different boxes at once,

something that will work the best for everybody. And that is train for strength, but have enough conditioning type work to have the cardio effects, to have the work capacities, have the fitness. You know, usually if we were programming for a client, we might try and do, if someone just wants to be strong, my only goal is to squat 300 kilos. I wouldn't have them, I'd barely have them walking.

You know, they do 5,000 steps a day, the rest of time, I'd be like, lift heavy, rest. Lift heavy, rest. But if we're trying to get an all-rounder, we'll use different modalities. Even your training program right now, as we're trying to build you back up from the running, is one heavy day, one higher volume day.

So we've got both the strength effect and a more, higher volume, build a bit more muscle effect, hypertrophy effect to try and tick a couple of boxes at once while keeping the program interesting. So prioritise strength, maybe add two cardio sessions, on whatever modality you want. If you like cycling, cycle, if you like running, run, if you like to do circuits like you do, do circuits.

But maybe two is probably the limit per week. You're going to get a lot from it, but without overdoing it. So break that down for me, though. What constitutes as a cardio session? So I would say something that is, you know, longer duration and higher heart rate. Right. Is it leaving it all on the floor, though? Not necessarily.

That would be more high intensity cardio. So if you're doing high intensity cardio, the typical circuit style training that people know of, those sessions need to be sure. I would say, you know, one of the things I say to Gemry is keep them under half an hour if you can. Yeah, which is music to my ears. Yeah.

You're doing it before the kids wake up. It's brilliant. It's a great way to train because you get, you're going to increase your lactate threshold. You're going to have much, much fitter. It's incredibly beneficial for the heart, even more so versus long distance running. Yeah.

Long distance running can be quite inflammatory to even the cardiac tissue, whereas high intensity interval training has been shown to be far more beneficial for us. the spiritual system, the cardio system. So short, sharp, super intense blasts. They have a far great physiological effect on the body. So they're of benefit. But if you are doing them, you have to keep them short.

You have to be intense and you have to recover well because they do take a lot out of your body. This again is why some of the more popularized, you know, HIT every day, the YouTube's or the DVD box sets, these types of things, they're not ideal. You know, they tend to dig you into a much bigger hole than you should be in because you can't recover from. Whereas if you're doing something more sort of steady state, longer distance, you're spending

time running or cycling on the cross trainer, then that can be a lot longer because it's done at a lower intensity. But even then, I would say 40 minutes to an hour, twice a week is enough. You don't need to be doing more than that. And you mentioned Gemma does one heavy day and one loaded day. So take me through what a heavy day workout looks like. One of the things we're trying to do is rebuild her hip musculature, the glutes after running because she did atrophy quite a lot. So she broke down quite a lot of muscle while she was doing the long distance running. Despite still strength

training, we dropped her volume while she was doing it to try and offset it. But when you're doing those kind of miles, inevitably you're going to start losing muscle in certain places. So what we're trying to do is on one of the sessions per week, we're having her lift heavy, so sub six reps, basically. So really,

really, really heavy reps. Longer recovery periods between sets so that she can maintain that weight. That's essentially training her nervous system to be stronger, to be able to innovate or fire up more muscle to be able to lift more weight. And later on in the week, her second session, there's an optional much higher volume one, but the second session is kind of moderate to high volume, 12 to 15 reps,

which is where we're actually breaking down muscle tissue. So instead of training the nervous system, now we're trying to train the muscle. We're creating damage, tears that when she's eating right, eating all of a protein, eating enough carbs, it's going to rebuild that and help them to grow back stronger. So one kind of feeds into the other. We get stronger so she can lift more weight for more reps, which creates more damage. and then we feed that cycle. So you mentioned recovery there.

This episode is sponsored by the Samsung Galaxy Ring, which I'm wearing. And it's great for tracking sleep and it provides you with an energy score, which is basically how rested it estimates you are, whether you should really push in a workout or hold back. How useful do you think health tech data is to someone on a wellness journey? So I would say useful.

I think very because it gives an extra level of accountability. Looking down and saying, okay, my heart rate variability is this. My stress or output is this. I'm feeling a bit crappy. My ring says you're not recovering well. Do you know what? I'll take a day off. I think that level of awareness is massive.

Being able to track your sleep. And if you're being told you are not sleeping well and you know what, I'm not feeling great, you're going to start to become more aware of sleep hygiene, making sure you're not, you know, watching TV until one o'clock in the morning. It gives you so many tools. It builds layers of accountability. They're going to help educate you on doing things better, which I think that has a massive effect because habit, habitual change is what's going to, you know, that's what's going

to make the biggest difference to everyone long term. You can go on a blast. You can do a six-week, 12-week transformation, which is amazing because it gives you, while motivation is high, it gives you that, you know, focused, hyper-focused period to get to the first stepping stone. But if you haven't built habits along the way, you're going to revert. And that's what, you know, 70, 80% of people do if they don't do it right, you know, if they don't change themselves habitually, they back off. So these types of trackers, I think, are incredibly useful for that. The level of accountability that you give you, you know, you love

yours, don't you? Yeah. The level of accountability is massive. Yeah. I think it's good when you can physically see what your bodies do, and I find it absolutely fascinating. And also you mentioned as well, with my training, it's funny because on the day where it's really, really heavy, I think, I think I've only got to do four to six reps. Six reps max I can do it. And then on the stronger days we have 12 to 15, I think I've only got to do 12 to 15 reps, but it's lighter.

And I don't know when you were saying, I don't know which one I enjoy, but which one I dislike the most because it's funny how you taught yourself into, like, if it's six reps, I think, right, that's just two reps three times. I could do it. It's funny, the mental...

Yeah. Yeah. So even though, obviously, people see me training, and I do love training, I still have that time where I think, my God, this is going to be awful. And then you go to an ice bath.

Yeah, well, I was going to speak to because recovery is well. You mentioned rest. A lot of people, I'm not one of them. I'm sure you're not either. But a lot of people struggle with the idea of having a day where they don't train. But rest and recovery is so important, isn't it? It's where change happens. Yeah.

It's as simple as that. This is something I have with all of my clients for the last 20 years, the same conversation over and over again. And a lot of it comes from, and this is one of the reasons. why I don't like the calories in, calories out, simplified argument, because that generally means one of two things. It either means someone's going to try to starve themselves into weight loss by eating less calories than they're burning, or they're going to try to train

themselves into weight loss. Most people don't like eating less. They don't want to take away the treats and all of this. So they'll train and train and train and train and train and train. And I think this is especially true for women generally. You're mentally quite a lot stronger when it comes to making yourself suffer. We'll decide to starve ourselves as a guy. we'll say, right, I'm going to starve myself for, you know, two weeks while I go on holiday. Then we'll get scared to lose a muscle. By lunchtime, we're eating again. Whereas a lot of women are mentally strong enough and focused enough when it comes to something like that because it does affect the confidence.

You'll eat an apple and a peanut for, you know, a week and a half and it's very, very damaging. So you need to make sure that when you're training, the idea behind it is not calories in, calories out. It should be performance. Yeah. And in order to perform, you have to recover. You're going into the gym to lift heavy, essentially to cause damage is the way to think about it. The whole point of going into the gym is to cause damage, is to break something. You then break it.

You allow your body enough time, enough food, enough rest, enough sleep to rebuild that structure that you broke. But because it doesn't want to be broken again by exactly the same stress, let's say it's 100 kilo bar on hip thrust. If it knows that 100 kilo bar broke it, you give it three or four days to recover, a week to recover, a week to recover, whatever it happens to be based on the rest of the training plan, it will build itself back 5% stronger to say if that 100 kilos gets me again, I'm going to be just strong enough to withstand it.

But then your job, obviously, to progress is to put 105 kilos on the bar. As an example, that constant progression in the gym creates the damage. You allow time to recover. The issue that people have is that they're constantly digging a hole, constantly digging a hole,

trying to train every single day, thinking that it's doing them some good and they just don't recover from it, which again, over time, in an acute way, it's not a massive problem, and I mean they're by a couple of weeks. If you're doing it constantly, you're not going to progress,

but the knock on affect your health is huge as well. Well, thank you for joining us today. We've actually got some quickfire questions. Gemma has them there. I'm going to ask you these. Short answers. Yeah. So what would you say, Elliot,

is the one workout move that we all should be doing? If I could pick one above all else, and I'm going to kind of cheat a little bit and say variations of, it would be the deadlift. Variations of the deadlift. Reason being it trains quads, glutes, hamstrings, back, upper back, midback, lower back, your arms, everything gets hit on a deadlift. So if you could say there was one exercise for the rest of my life, it would be variations of that. And that means conventional deadlift, sumo deadlift, single leg deadlift, staggered deadlifts, some of the hits a bit of everything. one that I would say learn. But of course, there are many more.

Even like your grip. I find my grip on a deadlift. It wrecks. Absolutely. What's the biggest misinformation about training that really, really annoys you?

Weight training makes women bigger. Drives me mad. It's still alive even after 30, 40 years. Absolutely drives me crazy because it just isn't true. Unless you really go some. It is true.

Again, not even that. You have to eat like a horse to be able to do it. Now, yeah, don't be wrong. If you are then eating loads and loads and loads of calories because you're eating a lot of crap, potentially being in a calorie surplus and weight training progressively over time

could make you big. But generally the sorts of people that are getting bigger, females that are getting bigger quickly, you know, the sort that would stand out and make this a thing, it's not weight training that's making them big. It's chemicals. Yeah. And I think that's where the fear comes from

because people see like female weightlifters or female bodybuilders and the competitions where they've not drank water for 24 hours, the periods have probably stopped. They've probably been doing all kinds and they think, if I go to my local gym three times a week, I'm going to look like that. And it's like if only we had enough testosterone naturally to... I think it's like we have an eighth or something of the amount required.

Somewhere between about 5% and 10% of what a guy has. It's not enough for them to get to get on muscle. You know, you have to really put some time and effort into it. Don't be wrong. Every now and then you may have a genetic outlier who is hyper-rescent. responsive, but even then you have to put effort into it. It doesn't happen accidentally. Yeah.

That was the moment. Next question, you've already answered this in the chat. Can women really build muscle in their 40s and beyond? Absolutely, yeah. It's going to be slow than it would be in your 20s, and it absolutely should be a goal for you because it's going to improve every aspect of your life. We've got a goal for me to hit 200 kilograms on my thrust by Christmas.

Yeah, that's the goal, isn't it? Get that one. I have to get one for me. Yeah. What's the biggest waste of my time when trying to get fit and strong or the biggest waste of anyone's time. Not doing it. Not getting into a gym.

Just making it. Yeah, that was a difficult question. It's not taking the leap because it's going to be a hard two weeks, three weeks a month after that. If you just stick to it, if you get over the hurdle and the fear of doing it, but the best thing you're doing your life. If you're just making an excuse, you're cheating yourself, aren't you? Absolutely.

Yeah. You're not cheating anyone else. No. Sure. Yeah. So I want stronger glutes. Obviously, I keep saying that. Tell me how to do it in one.

get into a gym while training progressively and make hip thrusts your friend. Hip does that are our friend. With grammar in there's a couple of cobblers in there maybe. And the last question, I think you've wrote this one, Claire. It says, tell us one thing about Gemma, who and me, that might surprise people. One thing about you that might surprise me. We're going to have to think about this. I don't think I've got any surprises.

Yeah, I think you're quite open. Quite an open book. She can be quite abusive when. she's training. Ursula, I've been called a few names way back in the day when I've trained her in person.

She's got a foul mouth. Yeah. I've heard the F-bomb today if he turns. That doesn't surprise me, actually. It's squeaky clean, but, you know, has a foul mouth when she's under duress.

Yeah. I'm all, what do you say? I'm loving light and a little golf, fuck yourself. That's me. Love that. There's a motto. Yeah.

And then lastly, we do the hack or hate, don't we? Yeah. Do you want to do the hack I hate for earlier? I will do. So,

we're going to ask you quick fire questions. You need to tell us if it's one of your health hacks or do you hate it? So would you in the bin? Getting up at 5am. It's the matcha or the three ensembed Cephora of the fact that I just need to denishé who

energize o'clock? And so many regrouped. Hello, Ben. And the embellage, too beau, who is practically pre to donate. And I know that I should be they offer them. But I I guard the summer Fridays and Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez.

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Way, Cifora Collection and other part of quick Procurry you Corma standard and mini

regrouped for a better quality of price or in online on C4pa or in magazine. I'm going to say a hack for some people

a hate for others it doesn't need to be whatever you're not become a billionaire because you get up at 5am however

getting up early getting stuff done before the rest of the world wakes up and starts distracting you I think has

massive merit Yeah, massive merit. Absolutely. Get it done. Yeah. Drinking lemon water. Not the hack that everybody thinks it is, but is useful for stimulating in my mind

and certainly what I've seen with clients, stimulating some digestive acid release first thing in the morning and lessening bloating throughout the day. Daily meditation. Depends on the person and depends on the type of meditation. For me, trying to sit still and meditate, which I'm sure is good for me, just makes me angry. We were saying that before,

I can't do it. Walking, which I would consider my meditation, going out and walking by the sea or walking in the forest. Yeah, for sure. So I think taking that time in whatever way meditation manifests itself to you, yeah. Would you walk in silence or music, podcasts? Again. Just as well.

You'd be listening to Just as well, aren't you? Oh, yeah. Something like this. Anything else? No. Meal prepping every Sunday. I think it can be a massive help, but again has to fit into a person's lifestyle, you know.

If you have time to meal prep every Sunday, do it. If you'd rather spend it with your family, do that. If it makes you happy, but make sure you have the discipline to meal prep every Tuesday and Thursday instead. Do you meal prep every Sunday? I do, but I'm flexible enough that during my day, I can do it first thing in the morning. No caffeine after 2 o'clock.

I'd say a hack for most people. Yeah, I love caffeine. Yeah, I think people, everyone loves it, but maybe overdoes it. Caffeine's not bad inherently, but the amount that most of us take, maybe not so good. So Dr Tim Specter, or Professor Tim Specter, was telling us there's actually a fermented food

and is literally gas microbiased coffee. He said if you have ice coffee, it's fermented. And then I did say, we can have it all day? And he went, no, I said, in moderation. So that's exactly what I mean. This is why I'm very careful about what I say to clients. Because you give a client an inch, they'll take a mile. that would have resulted in 13 cups of coffee.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I said. So you have this all the time? Exactly. Well, in moderation. Because you do drink coffee late. I've noticed you're walking around with your prets quite late in the day, aren't you?

I can't do that. Coffee. Nothing is just a black, organic black. I remember before I came in there. Always doing 10,000 steps a day. I'd say hack. Yeah. It's very beneficial.

Very beneficial. No screens an hour before bed. Hack, beneficial. Do you do it, though? I definitely do, yeah. Oh. Yeah. I'm quite calm in the things.

I'm turbo during the day, but then once my phone goes into my bedroom, it's on airplane mode, it doesn't get touched. Do you watch telly before, bro? So when you get to watch telly when everyone else is asleep? I am guilty of taking my phone to bed and do the last minute scroll. And I'm even guilty of looking at my work emails before bed,

but for me it's a way of, right, okay, I've dealt with everything that needs to be dealt with today and I can go to sleep. It's almost clear as my mind, as opposed to, unless there's one in there really annoys me. you have to deal with that. And then you're up until 3 o'clock at the morning and stuff.

Yeah. And that sometimes happens. Cold showers or I'm going to add in ice plunges there as well. I'm not going to say hate or hack personally. I think the benefits are greater for mental resilience and stress management as opposed to huge physiological benefits long term because I think it's one of those things that people are maybe doing a little bit too much of now because it's got trendy.

But definitely a hack for very many health. and mindset benefits. Because your body does get used to them. Absolutely. You get used to you. I don't do it every day because I don't want my body to get used to them. If I have a day like where I've slept shockingly, a cold plunge for me just resets everything.

I think you've given twice a week. Yeah. If I've had a day where I've slept great and I wake up feeling great, I think, well, there's no need to reset everything. I feel. But you were good anyway. Couldn't pay me to do it, though. What about a cold shower?

No. No, why would I do that? Now, put cold water here. Remember when he said about the pituital gland? Petuitary gland. Yeah. From the back of your neck all the way down, you should put cold water on there.

It just sets everything up. No. It's brilliant. I'm going to take you to a cold plunge. During this podcast, I'm pointing out there, guys. Claire's going to do a cold plumb. Yeah. I feel like there should be a vote on that.

Yeah. Yes. All listeners and subscribers vote if you want to see that. If you want to see Claire in a nice bath. Yeah, it's not happening. So that wraps up just as well. Thank you so much for coming to see us. I'm flying in for a lab there to see us.

We're so touch. And for anyone who wants to do my training program, obviously it is available. Yeah. It's on the Ignite app. It's also on the Women's Health. Yeah, so it's on the Women's Health Collective app. Yeah. And it's literally my program plan for plan.

But it will be switching up again soon, won't it? So yeah, you can check it out and get training with me. Is it just us or how? have we hit peak subscription. From Mealcatch to streaming, we have lost track of the monthly payments exiting our accounts every month. But one thing that won't add to the overwhelm

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So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.