Workout Tips For Women: Cycle-Syncing, Cardio Vs. Resistance Training, & Reducing The Chance Of Injury With Kelsee Moore

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Is it bad to not take a rest day? What are the red flags that you’re over-training (or maybe under-training)? Should women cycle-sync their workouts? Is cardio important or should we just focus on resistance training? Kelsee Moore is a strength and conditioning coach, coaching the best and brightest athletes and military service members in NCAA Division I athletics and Air Force Special Warfare.

Today, Kelsee tells us how to make the most of our workouts as women and she answers her most frequently asked questions like: How do we reduce our chances of injury? Should we rest our injuries or work through the pain? How quickly do we decondition if we take a break from training? What role does diet play? And what about rest? From her own experience as an athlete–running ultra-marathons and 50-mile races–and as a top-notch trainer who has worked with the best, Kelsee offers important insights and tips for training for optimal performance and health.

Go to Kelsee’s website: heyyomooreandco.com

Register for the Wise Traditions conference at wisetraditions.org

Check out our sponsors: Optimal Carnivore and Lumiram

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Listen to the episode here

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Kelsee Moore.

Is it bad to not take a rest day? What are the red flags that we’re over-training or maybe undertraining? Should women cycle-sync their workouts? Is cardio important or should we focus on resistance training? This is episode 497. Our guest is Kelsee Moore. Kelsee has been a strength and conditioning coach for over eight years, working with Military service members, the NCAA Division I athletics, and Air Force Special Warfare. Kelsee, a woman who has herself run ultra-marathons and 50-mile races, answers our most asked questions regarding workouts for women. How do we reduce our chances of injury? Should we rest our injuries or work through the pain? Tune in for pro tips for more effective workouts.

Before we get into the conversation, I want to let you know that we are 4 days from the Wise Traditions Conference in Orlando, Florida, from October 25th through the 27th, 2024. We’re excited to get together and to hear from amazing speakers like Zen Honeycutt from Moms Across America. She’s also the author of Unstoppable.

On Saturday, Zen will be exposing issues with our food system and what we can do about it. On Sunday, she will be a panelist on the topic of how to nourish our children from preconception onward. Join us. Go to Wise Traditions to get your ticket. Remember that this is a conference that nourishes in every way. We look forward to seeing you there.

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Go to Kelsee’s website: Moore + Company

Register for the Wise Traditions conference at Wise Traditions

Check out our sponsors: Optimal Carnivore and Lumiram

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Welcome to the show, Kelsee.

Thank you so much for having me.

I know you work with a lot of clients. Tell me about the ones that you’ve worked with who have struggled with fertility and found surprising solutions through strength training. 

Strength Training

A lot of women who are in this ancestral space want to go out and do all of the things. They want to learn how their bodies operate. They want to learn about nutrition, sunlight, and sleep and why these things are so important, but they could be missing a crucial piece in regard to their overall holistic health. That is through insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance.

There are a lot of fertility woes that are linked to that insulin resistance type of category. Strength training specifically can enhance your insulin sensitivity and be linked. I’ve had several clients end up getting pregnant, which is a phenomenal thing through incorporating strength training, mainly because of those insulin sensitivity type factors that are in the mix there.

You might expect that strengthening the body and doing resistance training makes you stronger. That makes sense, but one might never expect what it would do for insulin and fertility. 

We have two places where our glucose is primarily stored. It’s in our muscles and our liver. When we have bigger and denser muscle mass, we have the ability to store and utilize more carbohydrates. If we have a blood sugar or a blood glucose problem, which is insulin sensitivity, strength training can directly combat that.

You have studied all these things and worked with so many people as a strength training coach. Did you know this at first? I’m curious.

I was traditionally trained as a strength and conditioning coach. I have my bachelor’s and Master’s in Exercise Science. Those are going to be the more traditional, educational, and academic routes for learning about the body and how the body responds to exercise. Those are things that really did create my foundation.

However, on a personal level and experience in 2019, I experienced some really negative side effects of taking hormonal birth control. At that point, my personal and professional lives collided and I started learning more specifically about female physiology and how oral contraceptives and your menstrual cycle affect the way that your body responds to different stimuli.

I went down the major rabbit hole of trying to understand ancestral eating, holistic living, sunlight, and all the things that you talk about all the time. I’m able to piece together that gap where a lot of people either think they need to go hard and train constantly and some people think they only should be walking. I like to take that nuanced approach right in the middle.

How Women Workout

You were talking about female physiology. It makes me think about how women are fundamentally different from men. Consequently, I wonder if we should be working out differently than men. Can you speak to that?

It’s a really hot topic at this point, for sure. I always like to preface that pound-for-pound in regard to women’s muscle mass and men’s muscle mass. The muscle tissue itself is exactly the same, so the way that a woman would respond to strength training is very similar to a man. A man is driven by testosterone. Women are specifically driven by typically estrogen and progesterone. However, from the basis, men and women do respond to training similarly.

Men have a 24-hour hormonal cycle. Every 24 hours, their testosterone will peak. If they eat appropriately and sleep appropriately, they should be able to reset within 24 hours. Women have, if they’re in their menstruating years, a 28 to 35-day cycle if they are healthy and not on hormonal birth control. We have these particular ebbs and flows that we can sometimes capitalize on by training harder at certain points or maybe resting at certain points.

With the American obesity epidemic, I never want to hinder women from exercising. I don’t want to tell them, “Two weeks out of your monthly cycle, please don’t work out. Only walk.” The reality is that we have a massive gap between the obesity epidemic and also training appropriately. I would much rather tell women, “There are moments where we can capitalize on training harder, but if you’re not training consistently from the beginning, then don’t worry about cycle-syncing right away. Go forth. Go train. Go exercise, specifically strength training, for all of the benefits. Once you have that down consistently, then we can start fine-tuning.”

 

The key between women’s and men’s training is that women have less of a buffer if they are undernourished. If they’re undernourished, then women’s bodies say, “We only have one egg per month. We need to hunker down. We need to keep our fat stored. We need to hibernate.” Whereas a man’s body innately wants to have a high work output. If they are in a starvation state or they are undernourished, their progress and change are much more linear. It says, “It’s okay. We can trim the fat. We’re going to go find some food later.”

Whereas a woman’s body says, “We’re gatherers. There are no berries around. We cannot even take care of ourselves. How could we take care of the next generation?” It slows down, and there are some chronic adverse side effects to that. Specifically with women, stay nourished. Start training. If you’ve got those dialed down, then we can start looking at cycle-syncing.

That’s fascinating. We have these four phases of the menstrual cycle that we want to pay attention to. We know that there are going to be times when our energy’s going to be higher and there’s going to be a time when we want to cocoon more. It’s important to listen to that and, at the same time, not neglect the basics of staying strong. It’s almost like a dilemma.

That’s why I like to take that step-by-step approach. If I give all of this cycle-syncing information right from the beginning to women who are already probably uncomfortable in the gym, maybe they’re uncomfortable in their skin, or they’re overwhelmed with all of this information, then I am making exercise too complicated.

I have done that in the past, so now my approach to training is, “Let’s find something you enjoy. Let’s do that consistently. Let’s learn and educate you on the benefits of strength training so you will have more willingness and efficacy to continue to train on your program. Once we have that dialed down, then we can start fine-tuning.” The reality is your benefits from training consistently will outweigh if you happen to train differently according to what your menstrual cycle is saying. Training 9 times out of 10, you’re going to be okay, but if we’re looking for performance metrics, then we can capitalize at different points. 

I heard someone say one time, “What’s the best form of exercise?” I would say, “It’s the one that you want to do.” It should be something that we enjoy. What comes to mind also is Justin Rhodes who is the author of The Rooted Life. He said to me one time, “You’ve got to enjoy the process. If you like raw milk, that’s great, but you’ve got to enjoy the process of getting it. If you’re going to homestead, you need to be willing to milk the cow, care for the cow, and all the things. You can’t enjoy the end product.” I feel like that’s a little bit of some of what you’re saying.

I’m a big strength training type of girl. That’s where I’m going to always double down because I find the most benefits with it. If there are women out there who like Pilates, CrossFit, or doing group running classes, that’s great. Go and do it. That is amazing. If you’re having some adverse symptoms showing up, like maybe you’ve lost your menstrual cycle, maybe you’re having a hard time with your fertility, or maybe you’re not sleeping, then we can take the next step, a different approach, and say, “Maybe we should reign back some of your training.” That comes through hiring a coach who has that discernment to make those pivots and adjustments for you, and then you can hopefully consistently train in a way that you enjoy.

 

Hiring a coach is a great thing. I’m big on the power of intuition. In other words, the body is sending us signals. If you’re getting hair loss, you have fatigue, or you’re short-tempered with your family, then that is a signal that something’s off. Perhaps you’re training too hard or maybe you’re under training. People can also find =wisdom within.

Those come in different waves. That can be hunger signals. If you’re not hungry, that’s a red flag. If you’re hungry all the time and you’re raiding your pantry, that’s also a red flag. If you’re not sleeping, how is your digestion? What is your motivation for training? All of those things play into it. As we do understand a more holistic picture of the body, you can tune into those notes that you could be getting.

Intuition And Rest Day

Speaking of these things, here I am talking about intuition but honestly, I tend to override mine sometimes when it comes to fitness because I love it. I started out in this health and wellness industry as a fitness professional. I’d always rather work out than not. I’m all about strength training. My question to you is how important is a rest day? Is it bad to never take a rest day? 

I love that you’re asking if it’s bad to take a rest day because that means you’re training consistently. That’s awesome. What I would say is we should have some rest days. That doesn’t mean we’re sitting on the couch eating potato chips. We’re still getting our sunlight. We’re still grounding. We’re still going for walks. There are major benefits to having a hormonal reset. We have growth hormone, estrogen production, and testosterone production even in women that play into the creation and synthesis of muscle tissue, bone density, and other things that are regulated within our hormone panels and the enzymes that are created.

In order to have longevity of training, we should have what’s called an undulating periodized training plan. Meaning, you climb, whether in intensity or volume, and then you deload. That means you take about a week and reset. Your sets are lighter. Your volume is lower. You can eat more food because you want to rebuild and repair your system, and then you climb.

At some point, you get to a place where you’re incredibly resilient. You’re less injury-prone. You’re sleeping. Your systems are working. That all plays into that rest period. If you never have a rest period, then at some point, the stimuli will outweigh the machine and the machine will start to crumble. It’s not an excuse to sit on the couch and do nothing, but there is a process to being able to take a deload day or a deload week within your program.

 

If you never have a rest period, then at some point the stimuli will outweigh the machine and the machine will start to crumble.

 

It makes sense. I’m thinking of something that Steven Covey wrote years ago. He was the one who wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He called it sharpening the ax. Imagine that I’m topping down a tree and I keep hitting it. After a while, if it’s a big tree, it might not come down and I’m also going to get exhausted and my ax blade is going to become dull.

What I need to do is take a break, sharpen the ax, and then come back at it. I’m going to have more energy and the ax is sharper, so I’m going to be more effective. The body needs a chance to regroup too. I’m glad we’re having this conversation. I like the way you framed it that we’re giving our body a chance to regroup and then get up there again. It builds a nice flexibility in what the body’s able to do.

There are so many physiological things that happen during a rest period. We cannot overlook the mental state when we take a rest period. We may be antsy to get back out in the gym or get back outside and run, but the reality is if you don’t have a moment to sit down and reflect on your past week’s training or your past cycle training, then you will, at some point, have less motivation to go and train. It does play into being able to string more weeks, more days, more months, and more years of training together when you have the self-control to take a rest day.

Where The Fitness Industry Miss

That’s a great word. I want to go back. You mentioned CrossFit and Pilates. We know that there is a fitness boom going on, but where is it that the conventional fitness industry is missing the mark?

I do love that exercise is becoming more trendy. It’s more about community-based aspects. Pilates classes and CrossFit classes do an amazing job of that. What I am always fearful of is that within the fitness industry, there can be a tendency to say that the healthier you are or the more fit you are, you will find more value in your life. While I say, “I understand what you’re saying,” the other side of the spectrum, which is body positivity, is saying, “I’m valuable too even though I may not be healthy.”

Let’s pause. If we are giving innate value to ourselves based on our health or fitness status, then we will always lose. We could be the most fit in the world but the reality is that we have this fundamental understanding that we do not get our value from our health, contribution to society, or dependability on others. The reality is health, for example, we give the same rights and privileges to people who are unhealthy, in comas, or have chronic diseases. They are as much made in the image of God as somebody who is very healthy.

For contributions to society, the example I always give is homelessness. That person doesn’t give a lot in regard to the cycle of society. However, they are still given the rights and privileges because they’re made in the image of God and they’re human beings. For dependability on others, my example is always children, regardless of the stage of development, a child has rights and privileges and they should be given love and care the same as somebody who is older.

I’m always cautious. The fitness industry says, “You will be better, great, and more awesome if you are fit.” I say, “I get what you’re saying. You’re trying to say that your quality of life will be better, which I completely agree with, but I never want to give the misnomer that your value is attached to your health because it never will be.”

Once I’ve established that with my clients, I say, “I’m a girl who wants to go out, work, and exercise, but I’m doing it to enhance my quality of life, not to give more value to myself or fulfill my body image desires through the fitness industry.” I always try to make that very clear so that everybody working with me knows, “Even though you’re not at the place that you want to be, you are valuable because you are made in the image of God.”

 

Exercise to enhance your quality of life, not to give more value upon yourself or fulfill your body image desires through the fitness industry.

 

That’s so important. It’s too easy for societal programming of, “If I can do more, I’m worth more,” whether it’s in terms of dollars and cents in a career, education, or in the fitness world. The idea that the stronger we get the better we are as people, that’s not true, although there will be a sense in which the quality of our life will improve. We’ll find ourselves probably happier and with a more joyful outlook because we’ll know that we’re capable of more physically, but that doesn’t change our intrinsic worth. I’m so glad you spent time communicating that to your clients. 

I do have this mindset that we should enhance our quality of life through exercise because that means we can have bigger, better, and more crazy experiences. I’m training up for this big 50-mile trail race and I am most excited about the experience of being able to do that because I’m physically capable of doing it. If I wasn’t physically capable of getting to the summit, then I would be missing out on an amazing experience. That’s what I want my clients to have as well.

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Coming up, Kelsee tells us what’s involved in this 50-mile race, and she goes into whether the best training regimens include cardio or not.

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50-Mile Race

Did you say a 50-mile race? I have to ask you about that. How long have you been doing these? Have you done them before?

I have done three ultra-marathons before. I’m at a period of my life where I wanted to put a series of ultra marathons together, hire a coach, and refine my own personal training. I had been running my whole life. I ran track and field in college. In my adult life, I needed to compete in some way. That’s part of who I am and the intensity that I want to give off. I had to go through the process of being a client again. I wanted to hire my own coach. I wanted to learn from another professional. I’m almost at this peaking point. I ran two 50Ks in the last few months. In 3 weeks, my goal is to run a 50-mile trail race with 9,000 feet of elevation gain and loss. I am so excited about it.

Cardio Vs Strength Training

It’s going to be fun for this to come out. Maybe it’ll come out before you do the race, but if not, people can follow you and find out how it all went down. I want to pivot here and talk a little bit about specifics regarding training. There has been a huge movement for less cardio, which is interesting because back in the day, it was all about aerobics in the ‘70s or ‘80s. Now, some people do no cardio at all, some do some, some do high-intensity interval training, and some do lots. Talk to us about the role of cardio versus the role of resistance training in our workouts. 

They both have major positives. There have been so many studies published talking about how your aerobic fitness has a direct effect on your longevity, durability, and ability to combat a lot of chronic diseases that we are experiencing in America, like heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and all of these different things.

Aerobic fitness is how well your body processes and uses oxygen, which would be your cardiovascular training or cardiorespiratory training. There are major benefits to that. The thing that people are hearing and seeing of, “We need to be avoiding cardio,” comes from a place of we are, as a society typically, undernourished over calories, but undernourished in regards to our micronutrients, which I know you have talked about all of the time. We’re coming from a place of undernourished, under-sleeping, way too stressed, and very little muscle mass, which means our metabolism is already pretty low compared to our ancestors who had pretty high metabolisms for a couple of different reasons.

That is the place we’re starting from, and then we punch the gas pedal in with more cardio. We are not making a more resilient frame. We are withering. The generations above us who were cardio bunnies and were the aerobic fitness ladies, which I love that they are exercising, are seeing some serious problems down the road, which are osteoporosis, hair loss, and the skin losing some of its elasticity. All of these things start to happen because your body is undernourished and it’s withering.

Whereas with strength training, the idea is that your body is slowly overcoming and adapting to a more difficult environment. If you pair that appropriately with true nourishment, which is raw milk and animal-based foods, and you pair those two together, your body will want to rebuild and repair itself. In the ways that have shown differently between men and women, men typically carry a higher muscle mass and a leaner body composition, and in women, it will show up in a proper menstrual cycle. They will still have wider hips and probably carry a little bit more fat mass, but that is considered healthy for a woman.

 

I like to go from a place of step one, you need to be strength training, Whether you are a menstruating young woman or you are a peri or postmenopausal woman, you need to be strength training for your insulin sensitivity, your bone mass, your muscle mass, your metabolism, your sleep, and your digestion. There are all of these positives to strength training.

From there, once you have your metabolism and muscle mass dialed in, then your next step would be to incorporate more cardio because of all of those positive health benefits that come with having a high aerobic output. We need to have this understanding that we can’t do that from the beginning because we can’t punch that gas pedal in when our body is already in a state of hurting. It needs the repair first from the strength training.

I see. I’m hoping to interview a man whose name is Sean O’Mara who talks about sprinting for that cardio element. He says that we don’t need to do much more than sprinting. I heard a statistic that only 10% of the population over 35 ever challenges themself to run at full speed for a short amount of time. Isn’t that interesting? What do you think about this? Have you heard about that kind of training?

I have and I love it. I’m so glad you’re diving deep into that. A lot of times, with the long, low, and slow cardio, we think that our heart rate is staying low, but the reality is that we’re not doing a lot of those five-mile runs very correctly. In order to meet in the middle, having that interval style when you are nourished and you get your heart rate up, you are expanding and challenging your aerobic capacity. What also happens when your heart rate gets really high is that you burn primarily carbohydrates. We are playing into that insulin sensitivity factor that plays into so many different chronic diseases that we’re experiencing.

Injury

That’s fascinating. I want to ask you about injury because a friend of mine, Tommy John, talks a lot about how if you become injured, you need to move more. The person who came up with the RICE formula when you have an injury, which is Rest, Ice Compression, and Elevation, recanted. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but that guy took it back. My question is are we supposed to rest the injury or train through the pain?

That’s a great question. I’m glad you’re asking it. Specifically talking about the RICE rehab protocol, at the beginning when this gentleman published the RICE protocol, he was thinking, “Get the inflammation out of there.” If we have this ancestral understanding that our body knows how to rebuild and repair itself without medications or without passive work on it, then we need to let the body do its thing.

What you should be doing if you have, let’s say, a large acute injury where maybe you sprained your ankle and you have swelling and bruising is you should be trying to flush out some of the old fluid and bring in new fluid. That new fluid has the proper nutrients, repair enzymes, and vitamins in it to repair that site. We shouldn’t be hindering that with anti-inflammatories. For example, Ibuprofen. A lot of Americans are taking those types of things because they’re like, “I’m inflamed. I need to be anti-inflammatory.” The reality is we have those inflammatory responses on purpose.

If we’re talking about acute injuries, there are some things you can do. I do believe the Elevation is positive, that aspect of it. I also think that trying to do some light massage and pressing some of that fluid out so that you can get new fluid in are positive. If we’re talking soreness or a low dose of pain, then I use this pain scale of 0 out of 10. If your pain in a joint when your training is between a 1 and a 3, if that’s where your pain is sitting, then I say, “Train is tolerated. That’s okay. The benefits of your training will outweigh the temporary pain that you may experience in that specific spot.” If your pain is between a 4 and a 6, then I say, “Change the modality so that your pain goes down from three and below.”

 

The benefits of training will absolutely outweigh the temporary pain that you may experience in that specific spot.

 

For example, if you’re back squatting and your knees hurt and your pain is a 5, but if you goblet squat or maybe squat to a box and your pain is down to a 2, then great. Do a goblet squat or a box squat. If your pain is a seven or above, then I say red tape, “We are not training that joint, but you can train the other portions of your body.” If your knees hurt, then you should be training your upper body. That’s where that consistency piece comes in when you’re nervous about exercising. We need to start stringing some of those training sessions together.

That’s one thing I love about some of the folks I follow on social media who are into health and fitness in particular. They might have a torn bicep, for example, and they’re still working out with their left arm, the good one. They’re still doing squats and maintaining a certain level of fitness because they realize, 1st of all, that’s what their body’s accustomed to, and 2nd of all, it will make them stronger overall. They’re not going to let this setback stop them altogether. That would be a temptation if you injure yourself to say, “I’m going to take a break.” I always used to get worried about deconditioning. I don’t know if that’s a real thing or not. Is it?

It is. There’s a system in your body called myostatin. Myostatin is the withering away of muscle tissue. That happens in a starvation state, but if your muscles are not challenged, myostatin kicks in after five days. If you injured yourself and you laid on the couch or, let’s say, you got injured and you were in the hospital, and you laid in a hospital bed for five days straight, you lose almost 30% of your muscle mass because you are not training it.

That’s the problem we see when people go to space. Their muscles are no longer being challenged the way that they need it to be. They will lose a lot of their muscle mass, which plays into your ability to use and utilize carbohydrates. All of those systems are interconnected. If you’re injured and you’re experiencing pain, then you should train in the way that you can continue to train. If you are experiencing an uncomfortability that is over that line or over that level of six, then you should be seeking out ideally a physical therapist or a chiropractor.

Kelsee’s Training System

I want to ask you, speaking of clients, patients, and all this, how has your training system changed over the years? Are there things that you did early on that you would do differently?

I never want to look back with regrets on how I worked with clients. I developed such a different perspective in coaching and training. I had this idea that at this point, I need to meet my clients where they’re at and have the most education and academics possible as tools in my tool belt, and then I meet their needs with the particular tools that they need.

For example, if I have a woman who is experiencing a lot of fertility issues or maybe she is experiencing some obesity, I am going to work with her and come alongside her very differently than my male clients or male performance athletes because maybe they need a coach to come alongside them in a different way. You’re taught as a strength and conditioning coach to approach all of your athletes a certain way because you’re the special sauce, but I have come to the conclusion like, “I’m not the special sauce. My client or my athlete is a special sauce. I’m here to make them a better person.”

Another thing is I’ve refined the idea that your value is not attached to your health. Even if you’re a young woman trying to get pregnant and you’re having such a hard time achieving that or you’re a high-end athlete, at the end of the day, I always try to explain your health, your performance, or your peak metrics. Those are not a reflection of who you are as a person because God has made you whole based on what He has done for you.

 

Your health, performance, or peak metrics are not a reflection of who you are as a person because God has made you whole based on what he has done for you.

 

Once you can lay that foundation, then all of a sudden, we can work. We can train hard. We can take rest days. We can have harder and more difficult refining conversations. In the past, if I hadn’t addressed that value conversation first, then I’m trying to pull these tough conversations out of thin air. That became really difficult. I certainly progressed in different areas, which is positive.

Why You Need To Exercise

What’s crossing my mind is what is your most compelling reason for why people should exercise in the first place? After all, our ancestors didn’t have all these resistance machines in their caves.

It’s a great point. I’m also working in this ancestral eating and living space. That argument comes up every once in a while where they’re like, “Our ancestors didn’t have barbells and kettlebells.” I say, “You’re right. Do you know what they did have? They did have very heavy baskets. They did have to go walk and run for their water. They had to care for their children in much more physical labor-y ways.”

While that’s a valid argument here in America, we are still combating seed oils. We will always be combating artificial light. We will always be combating foot health and insulin resistance. We will always be combating that because that’s the nature of how our society works. The number one most compelling reason is because the more you move your dial from sickness to wellness to performance and the further you push your dial, the more resilient your frame will be when something happens like COVID. That was a great example. Even if you have this ancestral lens, the more fit you are and the more resilient you are, you will be able to take on harder and more difficult stimuli throughout your life.

I love that image of the dial. The further away you move it from sickness, the more you’re pointed toward wellness. Even if nothing hard ever comes your way, which is doubtful because life has these tough things that it throws at you, you are going to be so resilient and strong. Physical fitness also enhances mental fitness and resilience.

There is a huge mental component to pushing yourself physically every single day. I always say being in the weight room or being in the gym every day gives you a backbone of steel because all of a sudden, bringing in your groceries is not so difficult. All of a sudden, birthing your babies in a home-birthing center, you know how to endure. You have those small nuggets of tools in your tool belt where you can get through life and it’s not as much of a big deal to you. Whereas you can take a walk with your friends when you’re 80, but if you’re not resilient enough to do that, you’re missing out again on those memories and the quality of life that you could be having if you were fitter and mentally resilient because you had experienced that high heart rate or uncomfortability before. 

That’s right. It’s short-term discomfort for long-term health and resilience. The trade-off is simple in my mind. I’m so into it. Let me ask you. You talked at the top about clients finding that they could have babies. They became fertile as a result of strength training and resistance training. What other unexpected benefits have you or your clients experienced from working out?

We talked about the mental aspects of it. There have been some studies that have come out and said that strength training 3 to 4 times a week is a valid approach to anxiety and depression, which should not be overlooked. That is amazing. We see that within the fitness industry. People who go to the gym often are typically more comfortable in their skin. They like how their clothes fit. That plays within their confidence in their job, how they hold their head high, approach different people, and take on new opportunities.

They have positive residual effects. That’s something that I see all of the time. I also see so often imbalances get improved. I’ve worked with people who have had Down syndrome and autism. All of these different things that people are dealing with, I guarantee you will be enhanced and more positively benefited through strength training. 

That must be so gratifying for you to work with folks and see some of these changes not just physically but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

One of my personal pipe dreams is being able to mix a Bible study style with a strength training aspect because it is this holistic experience. You are enhancing your spirituality and you’re understanding God’s creation more. When you’re able to do more things with your body, you should be in awe of what you’re able to do because God has given you that body. Also, within the strength training component, I don’t think I’ll ever not be passionate about it because I see all of the benefits that it’s had in my life and also in my clients’ lives as well.

 

It’s time to wrap up. I want to ask you at the end the question I love to pose. If the reader could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

Strength train. That is an easy go-to right there. Challenge your body with external loads and forces often. Your body will overcome, adapt, and become more resilient in your regular life. 

This has been a fun conversation. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

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Our guest was Kelsee Moore. Visit her website, Moore + Company, to learn more. You can find me at Holistic Hilda. This is a review from Apple Podcasts. Shareeeeë had this to say, “I truly enjoy the panoply of guests that all offer such a unique niche. Unlike many shows, this one seems to tie all these tiny practices to the larger web that brings us back to health and wellness in a holistic practice without making a sale. It is empowering to the individual to do the things they deem will bring health to their life, not just, “Buy my magic pill,” or, “Start my magic program.” The tone stays very light.”

Shareeeeë, it is our pleasure to have this show. The guests are amazing, aren’t they? If you like the show as well, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Give us as many stars as you like and tell people why they should check it out. Thank you so much for tuning in. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

 

About Kelsee Moore

Kelsee Moore has been a strength and conditioning coach for over eight years, coaching the best and brightest athletes and military service members in NCAA Division I athletics and Air Force Special Warfare. She has her Bachelor’s and Masters in Exercise Science, is Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist from the NSCA, and US Army Reserve officer. In 2019, Kelsee’s professional and personal lives collided as she experienced negative side effectives to taking hormonal birth control, which eventually encouraged her to study more holistic topics in health and fitness- including hard nuanced conversations surrounding body image, animal-based eating and strength training for female physiology.

 

Important Links

• Kelsee Moore
• Wise Traditions
• Optimal Carnivore
• Brain Nourish – Optimal Carnivore
• Lumiram
• Holistic Hilda
• Apple Podcasts – Wise Traditions
• Unstoppable
• The Rooted Life
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

 

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