Phit for a Queen: A Female Athlete Podcast

We are disconnected from ourselves.

Jason Belz

Jason Belz shares on PHIT for a Queen that we are disconnected from ourselves. We do anything to take us away from being present. His goal is to get people to reconnect with their bodies.

Environmentally, we aren’t connected to our bodies. There’s so much stimulus going on outside our bodies all day long, and in this technology age, we sit all day – working from computers or phones or sitting in school. We are a car city, so we aren’t even walking places or walking to the subway. People have lost this connection to their bodies; how it can move and should move. So that’s my mission – to get people to understand how to move better.

I don’t believe you’re going to be consistent with anything that’s tied to negativity. You can force your head under the water for a while, but eventually, you’re going to come up to breathe.

I’m not going to weigh people and congratulate them on their weight loss. I’m not willing to have those conversations in my gym. It’s about movement and about connecting to your body and having a better understanding of what it can do if you challenge it and pay attention to it.

I like to teach people how to breathe and how that breath can be used to create tension and stability that they can then carry into their resistance training. They can then move more load because they are able to brace and resist force more, and that carries over into their dynamic work.

Females are such an underserved population in every way. With soccer in general, the numbers show the rate of ACL tears being 4-8 times greater with females than with males. This isn’t happening during hard tackles; it’s happening during non-contact plays.

When they are younger, girls aren’t encouraged to go in and lift weights and train. By not getting under a bar, they are not learning how to decelerate load (which is what happens when their body is coming down landing and kicking), and they are not strengthening their connective tissues. These girls are fast athletes on the fields and their muscles fire really fast. We haven’t given them the tools and the strength of connective tissue to keep up with the muscle fibers firing that way.

To prevent ACL injury, we also need to show female athletes ways to protect the knee. Knee stability isn’t in the knee – it comes from the ankle and the glutes and the hip.

Check out Jason and A Greater You, developing injury resilient, high-performance athletes: http://www.gr8ru.com/.

So you know Jason is legit –

Jason Belz is a trainer and gym owner at A Greater You (AGY) in Lenexa, Kansas. AGY specializes in group training, creating a sense of community as they focus on attainable and maintainable transformation. Jason believes results are seen in many forms: increased mobility, ease of daily activity, better sleep, growing confidence, strength gain, fat loss, etc.

Some rock-climbing communities are starting to emerge that are focused on body positivity.

  Marisa Michael shares on PHIT for a Queen that some rock-climbing communities are starting to emerge that are focused on body positivity. In these communities, rock climbers are speaking out that you don’t need to be thin to climb. If you have a body, you can climb.

  If you look at rock climbers on social media or in climbing publications, there’s a lot of information about how to lose weight and a lot of information encouraging weight loss to be a better climber. But the research on anthropometrics and climbing ability doesn’t support this. All the research we have says that no, you don’t need to lose weight to be a better climber.

  I love seeing the rock-climbing community come together to encourage rethinking long-held beliefs about weight. They are saying you don’t have to be thinner to climb better, and unnecessary weight loss is actually detrimental and has not been helpful for your body or for your sport.

  The more elite rock climbers get, the more eating disorder patterns they have. There is more pressure for them to perform well. They want sponsors, so they have to do well and compete well. If they think they need to be lighter to do this, they are going to do it.

  For me, there’s not always a balance between my work, my family and myself. I have things take over, but it’s purposeful. I’m mindful of how I spend my time, and a time commitment has to be something that helps my business, my family or my self-care.

  Check out Marisa and Real Nutrition LLC, offering personalized nutrition coaching: https://www.realnutritionllc.com/. Marisa offers rock-climbing courses on her web site that include information on how to eat before, during and after climbing for all levels of climbers – from indoor climbing to competitions and outdoor climbing.

So you know Marisa is legit –

Marisa Michael is a registered dietitian, Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics and certified personal trainer. She owns Real Nutrition LLC, a private practice in Portland, Oregon. She holds a master’s degree in sports nutrition and the International Olympic Committee’s Diploma in Sports Nutrition. Marisa loves triathlons and rock climbing. She firmly believes that food brings joy and a good relationship with food is important to both mental and physical health.