Episode #301: Four Types of Exercises You NEED In Your Workout Routine

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic Moms Podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority, so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want. Without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting, I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat, mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly, and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies. Well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:
Hey, friends, how’s it going? Welcome to may thank you for joining me today in this episode. And we’re gonna get back to some basics here. So this is going to hopefully be helpful, even if you’re not a newer listener. But just in case you are having a lot of emails and messages from people lately who are newer listeners welcome. And thank you for reaching out, especially welcome those of you who haven’t reached out. And I know I get it, I do the same thing that sometimes when you find a new podcast, you don’t always scroll back on through the archives. But in most cases, that’s where they’re really foundational. At least that is the case for this podcast, some of like the really pivotal foundational ideas, or just overarching themes that I just said, then from then on, assume everybody knows are just back in the beginning. So firstly, I wouldn’t encourage you to hop back if you’re a newer listener, and go over some of these basics that I cover way earlier on in the podcast. And, you know, it’ll just deepen your knowledge understanding. But I’m also going to start just kind of revisiting some of these themes and hopefully take you a little bit deeper, even for those of you who maybe have been with me from the beginning, who knows some of these things, but just taking that a step further for you, and your health and fitness. So we’re gonna get into the four basic patterns of movement today. Before I do so, I do want to say we are starting out a new month. And if you are in the chasing greatness group, or if you want to be that looks like new workouts, so don’t forget to go check out your new workouts, so many of you are in the chasing greatness group. This I usually suggest for my ladies who have already done the eight week program. So if you’re, again a newer listener and want in our holding out for that eight week program spot that’s going to come in June for my brand brand new ladies who really want to foundation with me, the chasing greatness group is kind of the step beyond that of new monthly workouts, we have a new focus different things we’re doing in there live workouts, all that good stuff. But there are some exceptions where if you’re not necessarily pursuing fat loss or you already have a really good background of nutrition information that I really covering the eight week, then maybe you do just want to hop right into the monthly and see if that’s a good fit for you. So feel free to shoot me an email if you want to ask questions about that Britney and healthy Catholic moms.com Or you can just try the free trial that’s available on my website or the via the links in my bio on Instagram, all that good stuff. So we are happening to a fat loss focus month for May and it’s gonna be a good time in there. So if I am responsible for your workouts, if I am working with you one on one, I am working with you in the chasing greenness group or I am working with you in any of my programs, even pregnancy postpartum. And especially that eight week beginner challenge. You are going to already have these bases covered by me. But this is nice for those of you who are doing your own thing, workout wise, and maybe some days you’re picking a workout off Instagram and doing the workout of someone you really like and follow. Maybe some days you’re doing YouTube video, maybe some days you’re doing your own thing. We’re all over the map here and it’s so great and it’s so wonderful about health and fitness that you can incorporate all the different kinds of styles that you like maybe like going to classes maybe you like more of a CrossFit style. Maybe you like more of a
Bodybuilding style, maybe you’re not sure what any of those mean. And you’re just newer to lifting.

Okay, this is big, I’ve been chatting with a lot of newer ladies lately, especially in the coaching calls, who are newer to strength training in general who are coming from a big background of cardio, or different cardio experiences, or who have done classes in the past and don’t know how to go that next step of doing your workouts on your own. So again, if it’s anything with me, this is already going to be in there. You don’t have to stress too much about this thinking, Wait, is there push is there a pull, I don’t always call it that. But believe me, this is how I’m setting it up.

So there are four foundational basic movement patterns. Number one is the squat. Number two is push. Number three is pull. Number four is hip hinge. So what this means is these are basic, like movements in actual life that your body does, right? Think of how many times a day you bend down to pick something up. If you’re a little kids, that’s a lot, you’re bending down to pick somebody up, out of the bathtub, you are bending down to pick up toys, all that stuff. So that falls in the squat range. And if you don’t have little kids, I’m sure there’s a million other things you’re doing squatting down to pick things up, right. So that is in that first category, anything where you’re bending at the knee, and hips are going back, maybe hips are going for a little bit, but that’s the basic motion. Okay? Now, push, think about that there’s so many times in life where you’re pushing as well, you’re pushing a door open, you’re pushing to move something, anytime you’re using those chest, triceps and shoulder muscles and just moving force forward, right. And that can look like in a lot of different ways it can be when you’re lying on your back when you’re standing when in whatever, lots of different positions. This is a basic function that your body does. Okay, number three, again, is pull. This is very common. We’re pulling a lot in our daily lives, right? We’re, well, I don’t know, maybe some of us, I guess, if you’re really sedentary like but I actually don’t pull that many things. I don’t play tug of war that often or anything like that. But most of us are pulling even a door open or we’re pulling to get something out of the grocery cart or whatever. Lots of pull going on this from our back, our biceps and our rear delt muscles.

Lastly, we should be able to and we should throughout the day hinge at the hips. Okay, this is kind of the textbook if you ever look at, like in I don’t know, my very first job ever was Tim Hortons and I know we had a sign in the back room that was like you know about safely picking up boxes. And you see the little person like little stick figure figure like don’t bend at the waist, like bend at the knees. That’s pretty much this hip hinge position. It’s kind of the combination of squat meets your your hips hinging. So you’re not hinging over at the low back, but you are hinging from the hips and bending your knees most of the time. That’s what that looks like. So why is this important? Why do you need to train them? Well, why you really usually need to strength train in general, is so that your body is primed and ready for daily life. So that you you move properly in daily life. This is one of the biggest things I try to convey to women, whether they’re like new to work with me or have worked with other people or whatever. I hear a lot like, Oh, my burning off my kids isn’t my workout or like I’m really active. So I don’t need to work out this kind of a yes. And I get it and I get that mentality. And I’m also very much of the mind of like, yes, you do just need to be overall really active. And I don’t think anyone needs to spend an hour a day working out or specifically at the gym or specifically this that my issue is and the reason I do think yes but is that you need to train your body how to move. So if like you’re just counting your daily life as your workout. Great except for when you lean over to get a kick out of the car seat and you tweak your back because you don’t know how to properly recruit your core, you’ve never moved in that position under a load like underweight before. This is how we get injured. So I see it as our workout Prime’s us and preps us for our daily life. I think the only kind of like exception and like astrak here is if you already have a really good strength base, like you’ve already done that work of building up your core moving properly, your body knows how to hip hinge, how to push how to pull how to squat in with great form and great technique and you already have trained it in like a workout setting not just in daily life where you’re not sure if you’re doing things right you know, if you’ve done that before for any length of time, like six months to a year several years, and then and then here’s the and then and then your life now was very active. Like I’m not talking running around with your kids. Sometimes I’m talking about like, you live on a farm or you work in construction or something like that where you’re seriously picking up heavy things, moving them in the day like that kind of stuff.
That is where I will count activity as my workout if I am out in my yard, picking up bags of mulch, picking up bags of compost moving them around, like actually picking up heavy things all day, not just my 20 pound toddler, or things like that. Which yes, they can be heavy and whatnot, but it’s just incomparable. If you think about it, like, Okay, well, like my kids are my workout. A lot of times when you’re home, I see this so much. And I’ve been guilty of it, even knowing what I know, I’m training my body, how I how I do. How many times do you see somebody holding their baby on their hip or their toddler on their hip or in front of them and their hips are jetted forward, they’re sitting in their low back, and it’s just terrible for him. So that’s what we’re counting is our workout. I know, this is not the main message of today. But bear with me like that cannot be your workout, you’re actually holding somebody you are. And that’s work to your muscles. But with terrible foreman, what you’re actually doing is weakening your core, hurting your back getting short, tight back muscles, because you’re not recruiting your core and the list goes on and on. So if nothing else, take away from this episode, you need to be training these exercises in a controlled environment like in a workout. So that when you’re in your regular daily life, your body just does it is not even a thought. It’s just subconscious. You brace your core, when you turn over to get a kid out of a car seat. When you are I mentioned this one before on the podcast because it comes up to me every time we’re going on vacation, we go to a beach vacation or condos across the street. So we you know, our oldest is going to be six this year. So it’ll be a little more helpful. But otherwise, we’re totally a lot of stuff a lot of people down to the beach, then you’re walking it on the sand to get nice and close the water. You all know how it goes. And I just have like memories and visions of me slumped to the side one hand on a cooler. The other hand last year I had like one kid on piggyback one kid in the front wrap, I’m holding the cooler with one hand with my husband like was like a mess. And I remember thinking thank goodness, I know how to recruit my core. And then I’m not putting all of this in my back. I actually like by the time we got to the water, my core was burning. And I was like that’s so much better than feeling a back pain, right? So super important to do this in a controlled environment. So what does this look like if you number one, want to incorporate squat like So overall, these movements have to be in your routine.

So the how is up to you, which is great, which is so fun. I know I have a ton of episodes on how to formulate your own workouts, how to plan your workout schedule, all of that how to design your full body workout is way back in the archive somewhere. And in that episode, I go through like pulling one from each category, these two make it a full body workout. So there’s the how is up to you and how this actually fits into your week. It might look like you have a whole day. That’s low body and it’s all squatting and hip hinging. So you’re just doing that all in one day, or maybe two days that week, like separate days, right. And then maybe want another day is a pull day and you’re only working your pull muscles, maybe then another day, another day is a push day. And another day is a core day, okay, I didn’t count. But say legs push pull core is for maybe you do that and four workouts a week. Or maybe you add in a fifth that it’s a full body day, or your fifth is whatever you need to prioritize because whatever your weakest on or its legs, push pull core.
Nope, legs, push pull, upper body, lower body and you 10 core in a couple of those workouts. So the how is very up to you, it’s just important to have these movements in there. So I’m just gonna give a couple examples of what these exercises could look like. And again, you could do if you lift three days a week, which I always promote three as a minimum. And this really lines up guys, if you listen to any other sources that are like reputable,
kind of more sports, performance kind of minded podcasts or books or whatever. They’re going to tell you at least three times a week of strength training, and it’s been kind of nice. I’ve shared that in a couple different podcasts that I’ve started listening to recently, I don’t usually listen to a lot of health and fitness podcast where the research comes in, and the science comes in and they’re talking about it and they’re like, yep, at least three times a week or okay, you can do full body at least three times a week. And I’m like, yep, there it is just kind of validation of what I have always said and what my guides have always been. And it’s good and confirming when you obviously see this across multiple sources that we’re all in agreement with each other about that. So I think a minimum of three days string training, and if you’re going to do three days, I typically would split it up full body then so you’re just getting it all done on non consecutive days. There’s a lot of Asterix here. If you’re newer, sometimes I will do upper body, lower body and full body for that person. Because when you’re newer you typically get more sore from your workouts and then it’s really hard to turn around and work that again in two days. If your legs are still super sore from you
to workout two days ago, you don’t want to have to look at doing lunges, your next workout. And it’s not best for your body to work out again when you are sore. So sometimes I will split it up like that even doing push pull legs for somebody who’s newer, you’re only going to hit that muscle group once in that week. But until you become a little more condition, this might be what your body needs. So super fun. And you can mix it up in the Chi synchronous group, I do mix it up a lot, I will go from I know we’ve had months even this year that we’re, that’s kind of the bodybuilding style splits, doing push pull legs, push pull legs, I don’t often program in six days a week, most of us seem to prefer a four or five day workout schedule. So mine are typically five day workout schedules, both the eight week challenge just like that, and the chasing greenest group are like that.
And so sometimes it’ll be like push pull legs, upper body, lower body, or sometimes it’ll be three full body workouts and to corn hit days or something like that, like that’s, it’s really fun that we get to mix it up into what we enjoy and not have the same thing every month to be like up it’s like day again, up, it’s this day, again, I think it’s, it’s motivating to me at least I like to train how I enjoy my own workouts, right, I like to train others in the same ways that I like to work out, which is a lot of mixing it up. But doing it with effective exercises. So some of examples of these effective exercises that you can include are. So this is going to be anytime you’re incorporating a squat, right. So this could be on its own leg day, just wanna make that really clear, or this could be part of a full body day. However you’re structuring things, squat exercises could be goblet squats I really love that’s where you take a dumbbell, or kettlebell or some kind of weight or just your body if you’re newer.
But I guess if you have the weight is going to your collarbone, your stances, feet hip width are a little bit wider, you are sitting back, and I have a bunch of demo exercises on YouTube too. If you are like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re trying to talk through this other podcast, there’s always a limitation to the visual aspect here. I know you can go check out some of my free workouts and see this stuff but goblet squats would be an example. Anything with like a back squat, I don’t really promote back squatting as much but you could if you enjoy that, and can do it safely. Sumo Squats, doing squats and a really wide stance with toes slightly turned out. And then I include lunges in this category too. So that kind of single leg squat work because usually when you’re lunging or in most lunge cases, you’re making a squat motion, it’s bending at the knees. It’s not a hip hinge. So I think it falls better in the squat category. It’s just bringing it more into a single leg at a time. So this could look like step back lunges, Static Lunges, Side lunges, curtsy lunges. Also could be in this category would be step ups which are great, lower body exercise, anything really where you’re hinging at the knee like that, not at the hips, you’re bending at the knee. And there’s a reason for all of it to this gets kind of like a little more nitty gritty, but there’s a reason for single leg work over just okay, Brittany had to just do goblet squats all the time, or could I just I really liked civil his cuts, can I always do sumo squats, we’re always going to naturally gravitate toward things that we’re good at. So it’s important to do the things that we don’t love. Because we probably need to do that we probably need to get better at them. It’s probably pointing out an imbalance between like maybe our right leg and our left leg or our weakness in some area. Another great example of a huge love hate one is Bulgarian split squats. Nobody ever likes these. I’ve had clients do these in person for years, I’ve done them myself for years, I put them in videos for years, they’re hard, you’re extending your one foot behind you at about hip height. So you are basically doing a single leg squat with your back foot up elevated is not easy, it’s a little uncomfortable. There’s a lot of like stretching going on as well. But guess what, you get really strong in that front working leg from being in that position. And it trains your body in a different way than a just a two foot squat does. So it’s important. Incorporating single leg work is really important for preventing injury, too, because you don’t want to be imbalanced side to side. And I should mention too when you’re thinking about these exercises, this is this could be a whole podcast episode in and of itself. You want to move in all planes of movement. A lot of times we just tend to move in the frontal plane front to back front to back, step back, lunge forward stepping lunge.
I guess lateral raises, not example that front raise those kinds of thing, things. But we really want to make sure kettlebell swings is an example of this. We want to make sure we’re moving in all planes of movement to help prevent injury. So we need to move laterally as well. This is where I see a lot of injury come in, come in to play for people who are even training a lot. But then who tweaked their knee when they stepped to the side or who do a weird like twist motion because you’ve never trained that so it’s really good to incorporate things like side lunges, even like like twisting
ended with chops I’ll put in my workouts a lot because you’re kind of pivoting at the waist under tension, you know. So that’s very realistic to life where you’d be twisting under tension. So again, want to make it mimic life. Alright, number two, push exercises will look like a push up is a good one. Good example you’re using your chest, triceps and shoulders could look like a floor press or a chest fly using dumbbells, or bans for any of these things could also look like a tricep kickback or overhead extension, getting triceps in their shoulders could look like lateral raise front raise, overhead press, all those kinds of exercises. So, again, we have so much room to work with, in varying our workouts that we don’t get bored, but lots of effective exercises per muscle group. Also lots of ineffective exercises. So don’t waste your time with those with anything that is you like balancing on one foot while doing something else while whatever like just stick to effective things.

Okay, number three is pull exercises. This is again, anything using your back biceps or rear delts. So rowing is a great example of this maybe a dumbbell bent row or a barbell bent row. If you have TRX straps, I really love TRX rows because your suspended and really challenges your back to do that under the imbalance there.
Tons of row variations, we can talk about that all day too. I really like banded rows, I’m using those in the next couple months. In the chasing greenness groups. You can do them anywhere. They’re really fun. Bicep curls, hammer curls, banded curls, TRX curls, all that for the biceps, and then rear delts hurt very under used under developed muscles. For most of us rear delts are tiny little backs of shoulders. Now a lot of us think, oh yeah, no shoulders, I work that all the time because I want that little cute shoulder cap. That’s what a lot of, you know, a physique a lot of women like is a little a cap shoulder to kind of highlight toned arms, great, wonderful, good aesthetic. But just as important is the back of those shoulders, which is like right by the shoulder blades, especially for those of us who are forward shoulder which is like 99% of people right now with the way that a lot of us are sitting. Sitting in our phones, I’m sitting, recording this podcast, I’m sitting on an exercise box, I’m trying to force myself to have good posture. While I do this, but we got to pull your shoulders back, they just creep forward to what so we have these long loose neck muscles, we have short, tight, upper neck muscle upper like back of neck muscles, and long loose front of neck muscles who want to get that that’s a little bit more posture talking. But it all kind of plays together, then their shoulders pulled back not crazy pulled back. But just in alignment with our bodies more in neutral than you know, they probably want to naturally sink forward and helps to train the body to pull their shoulders back. So this looks like banded face polls are my favorite exercise for this. I’d probably just put these in every single month, but I think that people might get bored. That is the only reason I honestly switch them up. Because I love baseball so much. I probably do them two times a week still by myself. Even if I’m following the chasing greatness group or group workouts, I will still throw in banded baseballs. But rear delt flies are another example that banded reverse flies, they have a couple of machines at the gym for this too. You can do this with cables, they have the reverse flying machine, all that great stuff, you have to work the back of your shoulders. And lastly, hip hinge. So biggest one for this is going to be your deadlift. I mentioned like that infographic of how to properly pick things up and that would include bending your knees. So that’s like a conventional deadlift style. You can use dumbbells or a barbell or whatever, I don’t typically use a lot of conventional in the Jason green disk group, or in my programs because most of us don’t have a barbell at home. And if you’re doing your workouts at home, it’s hard to do conventional with sorry, my husband’s mowing the lawn I think
with dumbbells or kettlebells, I just like one right by the window. So I typically program a lot of RDLs, Romanian deadlifts or stiff legged deadlifts. And the other reason for that besides most people having dumbbells and kettlebells over a barbell is that also again, going along with what most women want in their physique? Is that great definition between nice lifted glutes and then seeing like the backs of your legs like picture that like little butt shape and then straight legs, that’s what most of us would like rather than one big lump or not sure where your glutes and your hamstrings begin or whatever.
And that’s a really big thing in our world and in our culture with so much sitting. There is a real thing. I was chatting I know you’re gonna hear this with a former client, current client, whatever we’re we still chat all the time. We’ll work together one on one and we talked about dead butts syndrome, which is you can Google it and go down that rabbit hole of the truly when you’re
glute muscles just turn off and stop working because you’re sitting on them too much. And it is a thing or bleacher. But we’ve heard a lot of terms. So our deals are really great to combat that. And to give you that, I like the combination you’ll see a lot than in my workouts of hip thrusts, barbell or dumbbell, whatever you’ve got bandit are really great if you can Jimmy that up banded hip thrusts, and RDLs are an excellent combination for that, but not only aesthetically, he’s like I know, and it’s fine. We can care about aesthetics, that’s absolutely fine to be motivated by that as well. Obviously, given that it’s in the proper order, we’re not trying to attract the attention of our neighbor, literally or, or make our friends jealous or look great on the beach or whatever. But especially for those of us who are married to, you know, want to be pleasing for our spouses and keep ourselves in shape, I think is totally fine venture and intention. Again, it’s I think, keeping all that in check and not to your intentions too far. But regardless, aesthetics aside, the strength of your glutes, your glutes are the strongest muscle in your body and the strength of your glutes are actually a big indicator of your overall health. It’s kind of like how dental health is also a very big indicator of your overall health. And that shouldn’t be understated. I know when I’m pregnant, I go to the dentist anyways. But when I’m pregnant, I’m always like, okay, am I good? Because I’m always worried about my teeth when I’m pregnant. I know it’s also like a weaker spot. They’re like, Yeah, well, you like more people should be worried about the state of their teeth, because that speaks a lot to their overall health. So there you have it, I could do a whole episode on dead butts syndrome and how healthy glutes are a good sign of overall great health. But just take my word for it until then, that you want to have hip hinging in your life. And my favorite way to do it is the RDL. And again, that’s another one I would just put in twice a week for all my workouts, if I didn’t think everybody would get bored, but you’ll see then the variations I’m including that you can copy and you know, you could YouTube this I think I have these under how tos on my YouTube channel too. But kickstand RDLs are great Single Leg option to again, make sure there’s no imbalances, like one stronger legs taken over more than the other. kickstand. Urdiales are a great one. You can do isolation exercises like banded leg curl, it’s not totally a hip hinge, but again, working hamstring and so on and so forth. So I hope this was helpful. I hope it was a good refresher for those of you who are not brand new to this, but you need to be doing squatting, pushing, pulling hip hinging. Check it out and make sure even within those categories, you’re hitting those muscle groups I mentioned because we all have favorites we gravitate toward I know I talked about that. But I do this too. My husband was watching me workout one day, this was a couple years ago. He’s like you do a ton of shoulders. I was like, No, I don’t. He’s like no, no, I think I was doing a full body workout and just doing my own thing. He’s like you did hand cleans like back and shoulders. You did overhead push presses, shoulders. You did like med slams shoulders like okay, I guess I did. And I don’t really even want to work shoulders that much. Because I want my back to be strong as well not like more than my shoulders. But you get the gist. And he’s like, Well, you really did like basically you should have called that a push workout. Like wasn’t a full body workout. You had things in there. And a lot of pushing going on. So you know we’ve got to we’ve got to keep the variety in there if we want overall health and longevity, which is what I want for myself and and what I want for you and want you to be moving feeling great out 5060 7080 90 I have to say in here, too. I just ran into a little friend of mine had had her ration on Wednesday this week. And I don’t know when this coming out Tuesday, I guess so this was like just about a week ago. And she isn’t denying it. And she and her husband are the sweetest. And they have this adoration hour that my kids and I usually pop into and they don’t mind at all. So it’s a good time to go. You know, that is really Okay, good. They don’t mind. And she and her husband are always there. And they go to Saturday night vigil now. So if we happen to go to that we’ll see them there. But we don’t often do that. So it’s usually iteration. But anyways, they’re in their 90s. They’re wonderful. I don’t know, they might be farther in their 90s. And other at least it and her husband has been sick the last couple weeks. And he has some like heart trouble and stuff. So he was home. But I haven’t seen him in a couple of weeks. So I asked her about it and was like, Hey, is he doing okay? And she’s like, Oh yeah, he’s home to LA. But he made it to mass this weekend. And he’s doing pretty well. And then I asked her how she was doing. She’s like, you know, Britney, if I was 50 I’d be worried. But at 90 I feel pretty good. I was like, all right. And also my husband are laughing about that because I think everything’s so relative. I joke to my kids, like mom’s too old for that. And like yes, I’m 31 and that feels old to me right now because it’s the oldest I’ve been. But I was laughing saying to my husband like Man, we joke that we feel differently than in our 20s and someone at work was telling him the other day like just wait till your 40s It feels a lot different in your 40s so then I just laughing at this 90 year old woman saying like if I was 50 and I’m thinking like to her that was
But like a great young number to fathom going back to you and it’s all in perspective and we want to be but seriously God willing, we are all 90 talking to somebody saying Yup, I feel pretty good at 90. How great do we want to be able to like move around she drove herself to church like it’s we want to be able to move alright so move it or lose it. I hope you have a great rest of your week. If you got anything from this podcast that you valued and you haven’t rated or reviewed it, I would really appreciate if you take a second to do that. It takes honestly 30 seconds and I would appreciate it so much. All right ladies, until next time, next time we are going to talk about oh it’s how humor passion and purpose can help achieve a healthier you. It’s gonna be up on my Alright, I will see you then.

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